Marginal Revolution: When is democracy an equilibrium?

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When is democracy an equilibrium?

...democracy may only be stable when one group is dominant. We provide a test of a key aspect of our model using data from "La Violencia", a political conflict in Colombia during the years 1946-1950 between the Liberal and Conservative parties. Consistent with our results, and contrary to the conventional wisdom, we show that fighting between the parties was more intense in municipalities where the support of the parties was more evenly balanced.

Here is the paper, here is a non-gated version.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on January 16, 2007 at 03:24 PM in Political Science | Permalink

Comments

...fighting between the parties was more intense in municipalities where the support of the parties was more evenly balanced.

With all due caveats (i.e., I have read only the abstract posted above), just why would this finding be against "conventional wisdom"?

Posted by: MSS at Jan 16, 2007 4:45:09 PM

I guess the conventional wisdom is that overwhelming domination and power would result in one party exercising more brutality. One party states, for example, are notorious for this kind of behavior. Also, for most of military history the bulk of casualties occurred when one side had been defeated and was in retreat and their attackers could cut them down without fear for their own lives. I think within democracy the claim of this paper makes a lot of sense though.

Posted by: TGGP at Jan 16, 2007 5:57:53 PM

The conclusion, "democracy may only be stable when one group is dominant" does not follow from the evidence "fighting between the parties was more intense in municipalities where the support of the parties was more evenly balanced". Many of those same municipalities were evenly balanced in the 1920s and 1930s (and early 40s), yet there was a democracy in Colombia then.

In a civil war, the fighting will always be most intense where the forces are nearly balanced; where they are unbalanced, the larger side wins quickly, and the fighting ends.

Posted by: Anthony at Jan 16, 2007 6:40:22 PM

One party states don not necessarily have the support of a large percentage of the people.

Posted by: josh at Jan 16, 2007 6:43:30 PM

Am I the only one here who can see that "diversity" and stability might not be complementary?

Posted by: Peter Schaeffer at Jan 17, 2007 1:46:02 AM

About Anthony's comments,see brackets.
"The conclusion, "democracy [may] only be stable when one group is dominant" does not follow from the evidence "fighting between the parties was more intense in municipalities where the support of the parties was more evenly balanced". Many of those same municipalities were evenly balanced in the 1920s and 1930s (and early 40s), yet there was a democracy in Colombia then."

Posted by: Rohan at Jan 17, 2007 3:40:58 AM

I've also only read the abtract above. But I do have one obvious question: What's a "group"?

Posted by: Scott Wood at Jan 17, 2007 6:51:46 AM

Is http://www.svt.ntnu.no/iso/ragnar.torvik/violencia5.pdf the non-gated version you wanted to aim us at?

-dk

Posted by: Dick King at Jan 17, 2007 6:56:40 PM

I read Anthony Downs to conclude the same thing, but the neccessary dominant group is the
middle class.

Posted by: will mcbride at Jan 19, 2007 2:00:29 AM

There's a brief but smart book by Roger Gould on the topic: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/15832.ctl

In essence, Gould argues equality (or ambiguity about rank) breeds conflict, at all levels of society. It's not a perfect book; the author passed away while the manuscript was still in draft, but it's a solid idea.

As for one-party states, I think you can make a pretty solid argument that they are in fact seriously threatened by even small dissenting groups.

(Full disclosure: I worked on the book in my job at UCP)

Posted by: Tim at Jan 19, 2007 1:59:47 PM

Peace through oppression, what a novel idea, overwhelming numbers ( bombs or people )as a deterrent to confrontation, these are all old dogmas, which for better or worse, work.Even overwhelming economic pressure can work to deter conflict. So, why are so many of our young people dying in global conflicts?

Posted by: WD Reed at Jan 20, 2007 11:27:02 AM

I completely agree with the statement that democracy will hit the equilibrium when it is dominant. I have just learned a whole section on Supply and Demand and how it has been broken down. As long as the Republican and Democratic parties are competing with opposing views, they will never hit the equilibrium. It would be great if they did, but then again it is politics, when do they ever come to a consent? Thats besides the point, if there was only one political party, there would be a better chance of reaching an equilibrium point as there would be more focus on satisfying the people than competing with the other party.

Posted by: Student at Jan 22, 2007 10:40:33 PM

It seems that the follwoing statment: "we show that fighting between the parties was more intense in municipalities where the support of the parties was more evenly balanced." is consitent with the idea that collective decision making need enforcement power. That is probably what the 'dominant group' would provide. However my own wors shows that in a dynamic framework, the existence of more powerful groups may lead to tyranny and not more stable democracy.

Posted by: Aldoctor at Jun 15, 2007 7:42:10 PM

H i
B e s t w i s h e s。
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