On March 22, CIDEG Academic Salon No. 184 was held at Tsinghua University School of Public Management. This salon invited Xie Yang, an assistant professor in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Riverside (UC Riverside), to share the theme of "Hobbesian Wars and Institutional Safeguards". The salon was moderated by Junming Zhu, Associate Dean and Associate Professor of Tsinghua University School of Public Administration, Adjunct Research Fellow of CIDEG, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Industrial Ecology.

Chen Ling, Director of CIDEG and Associate Professor of School of Public Administration, Tsinghua University, Zhao Jing, Associate Director of CIDEG and Associate Professor of School of Public Administration, Tsinghua University, Chen Jidong, Associate Professor of School of Public Administration, Tsinghua University, and Guan Ting, Assistant Professor of School of Government Management, Beijing Normal University, attended the salon and served as reviewers.

Moderated by Mr. Zhu Junming, Mr. Xie Yang, the keynote speaker, introduced his academic experience and research area, and welcomed the experts and students who attended the salon.

Mr. Xie Yang introduced the theme of the academic salon from Hobbes' Leviathan, starting from Hobbesian war, the state of nature in Hobbesian politics, and raised the question of "what kind of social system can solve the chaos of Hobbesian war". Mr. Xie Yang constructed several models of social institutions and described them in the context of medieval Europe.

Mr. Chen Jidong expressed his interest in the shared content in his commentary, saying that the models proposed by Mr. Xie Yang combined the classical problems prevalent in political and economic phenomena and had wide application in reality.

Director Chen Ling called Mr. Xie Yang's presentation a "mind-blowing" article with many propositions and inferences, which was very inspiring. Director Chen Ling also raised questions about "consensus decision-making".

Deputy Director Zhao Jing suggested that the research done by the School of Public Administration is more oriented toward practical policy making and implementation, and the theoretical models explained in the salon today are very inspiring and valuable for practical research.

Ms. Guan Ting affirmed the inspirational content of the salon and further raised the issue of the alignment between the theoretical model and its real-world application.

Prof. Xie Yang responded to the questions of the reviewers and gave a full explanation and discussion on the issues raised on the spot.