TY  - JOUR
AU  - Fogel,Robert W.
TI  - Problems in Modeling Complex Dynamic interactions: The Political Realignment of the 1850s
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Historical Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 12
PY  - 1993
Y2  - January 1993
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0012
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/h0012.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Robert W. Fogel
Director,  Center for Population Economics
University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business
5807 S. Woodlawn Avenue, Suite 367
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/702-7709
Fax: 773/702-2901
E-Mail: rwf@cpe.uchicago.edu
M1  - published as Economics & Politics, Vol. 4, No. 3, pp. 215-254 (November 1992).
AB  - The aim of this paper is to break open the stochastic component of a maj or political change and to show that what seems like the product of purely chance events is the particular conjunction of processes, each of which is definable in a systematic way, that provide collectively a favorable context in which purely chance events operate. It is only in a particular context that the purely chance events became decisive in bringing about a particular political outcome. Section 1 emphasizes that Lincoln's margin of victory in 1860 was so small that anyone of numerous chance events could have resulted in his defeat. Sections 2-4 outline the intergenerational, cohort, and period changes and events that created a context favorable for the political realignment of the l850s. Section 5 describes the key chance events of 1855 -1856, the absence of any of which could have prevented the formation of a major national Republican party in 1856, as well as the chance (or at least exogenous) events of 1857-1859, the absence of which could have led to splits in the Republican party that would have insured the victory of a proslavery candidate for the Presidency in 1860. Section 6 deals with the problems and advantages of turning the theory of the political realignment of the l850s implicit in sections 2-5 into an explicit, testable mathematical model. Section 7 explains why it is impossible to produce a general theory of political realignments that would have significant predictive power. 
ER  -