Catastrophe Theory is the cute name for a branch of mathematics developed about 50 years ago. It's not just about catastrophes but the name was too precious not to stick. I think that the insights that come from this branch of mathematics might shed some light on the evolving current political scene. But, as is my wont, it's time for a digression. In order to shed light on catastrophe theory let me first talk about linear analysis.
What does it mean to say in the mathematical sense that something is linear. A classic example is the famous equation in physics that comes from Sir Isaac Newton: F = ma. In words, this is "Force equals mass times acceleration". In this case the equal sign is literally true. Take the mass of an object and multiply it by its acceleration and you get exactly the amount of force applied. For those of you whose physics is weak let me take this a step at a time. If you are in a car and you mash on the gas pedal the car speeds up. This change in speed is called acceleration. Mass is the same as weight in every day situations. It's that number that is displayed on your bathroom scale. There is a technical difference between weight and mass but I am going to skip over that. That leaves force. Force is how hard you push on something. So when you mash on the gas pedal the engine revs up and pushes harder on the wheels. The car speeds up. If it is a big engine (lots of force) and a light car (not so much mass) then the car speeds up (accelerates) a lot.
What "F=ma" tells us is that there is a "linear" relationship between force and acceleration. If you push twice as hard you will get exactly twice as much acceleration. And the relationship works backwards. If you want the car to accelerate half as fast then apply exactly half as much force. "F=-ma" is a simple equation. The whole thing has only 4 letters in it. So linear relationships are about as simple as you can get in physics. Now, a lot of things are not linear. But mathematicians and physicists have come up with a lot of tricks to handle various situations.
Maybe in some situations you have to apply a little more than twice the force to get twice the acceleration, for instance. The Einstein "relativity" version of "F=ma" requires just these kinds of adjustments. I'm not going to get into them because I want to keep things simple. But even though a lot of situations in physics may not be strictly linear the basic insight often holds. If you want more of one thing provide more of something else. If you want less of something then provide less of something else. These situations are technically called "monotonic relationships". And monotonic relationships are common and intuitive. They seem like how a lot of the world works.
We can see this playing out all the time in politics. The relationship may not be strictly linear but we naturally assume that more gets more and less gets less. Generally, for an issue it is common to assume that there are a verity of positions held. These positions can be laid out on a scale going from "more of this" to "more of that". Commonly we will have a scale going from more conservative to more liberal. And it also seems like we can place say Senators on this scale. So we place everyone in their proper place on the scale. To get something done we need to pass a bill. The idea is to structure a bill so that has the right mix of liberal and conservative components. What we want to do is to get a majority of the Senate to be in favor of the bill. So we put the mix of components that will garner the support of a majority. Let's say we start with a very conservative version of the bill. We will start with only a few Senators supporting it, those whose position is as conservative as or more conservative than the bill in its current form. Then to get more support we add liberal components. As the bill slides down the scale toward the liberal side it will pick up more and more supporters. If we do this correctly then we will end up with a majority supporting the bill and we can pass it out of the Senate. The same approach can be used where we start with a very liberal bill and keep modifying it to add more and more conservative supporters.
This process is not strictly linear. Making the bill 1% more liberal is not going to always get you exactly one more Senator. And the scale might not be a liberal - conservative one. And we can talk about the House instead of the Senate or an election or many other political processes. But this whole "add sweeteners till you get a majority" process is how things are supposed to work in politics. Here a "sweetener" is a component that will get you one or more additional votes, hopefully without losing any current supporters.
We can see this all the time. The stimulus package that President Obama proposed shortly after he first got into the White House is a typical example. The bill had "infrastructure" spending to appeal to Democrats. It had tax cuts to appeal to Republicans. It was designed to be a classic "something for everyone" bill. Health Care Reform was the same kind of thing. It had components designed to appeal to Democrats (expanded coverage) and components designed to appeal to Republicans (individual mandate - originally a Republican idea). It also had components designed to make various pressure groups happy: the pharmaceutical industry, doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, others. The whole idea was if you are a few votes short, add the right sweeteners and you can pick up those votes and pass the bill. This is linear thinking applied to politics. Push a little harder here and you will get a little more of there.
The same thing applies to elections. Voters are presumed to lie along a scale, usually assumed to be the liberal - conservative scale. If you don't have a majority then move a little right (or left) and pick up a few more votes. The key to success is supposed to be putting yourself close to the center. Depending on the specifics of the electorate you may actually want to be center-left or center-right. If it looks like you are a little behind in the race then you just need to adjust your positions to move you a little to the left or to the right. This will pick up enough centrist votes to put you over the top.
That's the model most people use to analyze politics. The idea is that a small change that moves you in the correct direction on the appropriate scale will turn defeat into victory. This is definitely how the media analyzes and covers politics. They pick the scale. They lay out voters or politicians (or whatever) on the scale. They then decide who is winning. They then determine which direction the loosing side needs to move in. They pick actions they think will move the losers in that direction then watch to see if they do it. Since the media does not exist to pursue truth but instead to pursue eyeballs (readers, listeners, viewers) that can be delivered up to advertisers the media does not worry about whether this "analysis" is correct. They only worry whether it attracts eyeballs. For the media, winning is not serving up accurate information. It consists of winning the admiration of advertisers. And admiration is measured in terms of ad revenue. The shorthand for this behavior by the media is "covering the horse race".
So lets get back to catastrophe theory. The key idea behind linear analysis is that small changes result in small changes. But there is something more. If a relationship is linear (or can be massaged to behave like a linear relationship with the proper mathematics) then you can always get back to where you started with. In our "F=ma" example, suppose we decide that we have too much "a". Then we can dial back the "F" by the right amount and "a" will settle back to where we want it. It may be complicated to figure out the right amount to dial back the "F" by but the proper mathematics will allow us to calculate the correct value. But can we always get back to where we were? Catastrophe theory says no!
Put a Popsicle stick on the edge of a table so that about half of it is sticking over the edge. Now push down on the end of the stick that is sticking over the edge. That's the "F". Now observe what happens to the end of the stick. It bends down. That's the equivalent of the "a" in our example even though it is not really acceleration. If we push down a little the stick bends a little. If we push down harder it bends down more. And it we stop pushing it returns to sticking straight out. In other words, it is a classic linear system. A little push results in a little bend. More push results in more bend. If we stop pushing it goes back to where it started. The actual amount of bend you get for a specific amount of push may be mathematically very complicated. But the general idea is simple. And the way most people think of politics involves the exact same ideas as our Popsicle stick analysis.
But now lets push really hard on the end of the stick. What happens? The stick breaks. Now if we stop pushing the stick does not go back to being straight. It stays bent because the stick is broken. This is the key idea behind catastrophe theory. The actual analysis can be quite complex. But catastrophe theory says that there are systems that change behavior radically if a threshold is exceeded. The best way to explain what mathematicians are talking about is to talk about catastrophes and that's where the name comes from. In our simple case the catastrophe is the stick breaking. But consider Superstorm Sandy. After you have washed away a bunch of buildings things do not go back to the way they were after the wind and the waves die down.
All this media analysis and a lot of the thinking done by many political experts is well modeled by linear analysis. For instance, the assumption is that the U.S. electorate lays out nicely along a liberal-conservative scale. Democrats are successful when a little over half of the electorate is feeling liberal. Conservatives do well when a little more than half of the electorate is feeling conservative. The expectation is that opinions will change slowly and in a liner manner over time. The electorate will slowly become more liberal or more conservative. This will result in a slow change from Democratic success to Republican success as this slow incremental change takes place. But what does the historical record say?
For decades the electorate was conservative and Republicans were successful. Then the Great Depression took place and all of a sudden (the 1932 election) Democrats became successful. This continued with some exceptions until the 1980 election. Reagan swept in and for the most part Republicans have been successful since. This behavior fits a catastrophe model better than a linear model. As late as 1928 the Republicans were doing very well. But in 1932 Democrats got in and for the most part stayed in until 1980. Then the Reagan Revolution happened. The Democrats were kicked out and the Republicans swept in and they have pretty much stayed there since. In other words some "catastrophic event" happened and the electorate switched pretty much immediately from one kind of behavior (say favoring the Democratic party) to another kind of behavior (favoring the Republican party).
We did not see a series of elections where one party does less well by a fairly small amount in each subsequent election until they lose control. This is followed by a number of elections where the new winning party improves their margin by a small amount until they peak and a swing back starts. Instead we see a series of elections where generally speaking one party prevails. Then a catastrophic event (politically speaking) happens and all of a sudden the other party starts generally prevailing. So I contend that I have proven that catastrophe theory is a better model for how politics works that linear analysis. Assuming I am right, who cares?
Well, I think we are now in the middle of one of those catastrophic events. It will take a few years to see if I am right. But trends are always obvious after the fact. What is interesting is figuring out what's going on before the trend becomes obvious to everyone. So what do I see and why does it make a difference?
The way elections work, in my opinion, is that they are about two competing narratives. Each side constructs a narrative. If you buy into the narrative you buy into the candidate. And that candidate and his party (assuming the narrative is part of a broader narrative) wins. If you look at either narrative it seems compelling. But only one narrative works because only one candidate can win. So generally voters come to have more faith that one narrative is more correct than the other one. At its simplest, voters believe one candidate more than another.
Now many attributes of these narratives can be analyzed to see if they are correct. It would be nice if the media and others did this. But they don't. They have decided that "horse race" is much more fun and easier to do. So voters are pretty much on their own for figuring out who is more right. And the Republicans have an awesome messaging machine. Dave Frum, a long time conservative activist, recently called it the "Conservative Entertainment Complex". For more on this see my recent post http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/12/how-obama-won.html. But my point in this post is that the Republican messaging machine has been very successful for a long time in convincing voters that the Republican narrative is more true than the Democratic narrative. As a result, Republicans have won a lot of elections between 1980 and now.
The messaging machine is still there. But if voters decide it is not credible then Democrats are more likely to win the narrative wars and, therefore, elections. As I pointed out in the "How Obama Won" post, Republicans have been pushing a number of unpopular positions. People who should vote Democratic (old white people on Social Security and Medicare) voted heavily Republican in the last election. But Obama in particular and Democrats in general won anyhow. If voters decide that Republicans are dishonest or are not working on their behalf then they will switch allegiance and, according to catastrophe theory, do it quickly and stay switched for a long time. Recently we have seen a number of reliable Republican narratives being rejected.
Historically, Republicans have been seen as being better at things military. But the Obama position of getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan are now very popular. In fact, most people would like to move faster than Obama wants to. The public has generally sided with Republicans on abortion/birth control. This actually makes sense. Old white people are past their child bearing years. So being against abortion/birth control carries no personal cost. People that are more directly affected, younger women, oppose Republican positions by large majorities. Another long time Republican narrative that has been successful is that Republicans are fiscally conservative and Democrats are spendthrifts. I wrote a blog post on this subject over two years ago that argued that this was exactly backward. Here's a link: http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2010/10/there-are-no-fiscally-conservative.html. Until recently the media and the majority of voters, however, have disagreed with me and agreed with Republicans. But voters now generally believe that Obama is better on the economy than Mitt Romney. And polls indicate that the public is siding with Obama on the Fiscal Cliff negotiations. I have argued in http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2012/11/off-cliff.html that it would be not that bad to go off the cliff. As of today (December 22, 2012) it looks like I may get my wish. Anyhow, the point is that sentiment seems to have shifted away from Republicans on the issue of "who is a better steward of the economy".
Finally, there is Gun Control. I have been around the block a lot on Gun Control. I am for it. But I have been losing badly on this issue for a long time. In his first term President Clinton pushed through a couple of what I would consider to be pretty wimpy anti-gun laws. One of them banned assault weapons and some other things. But before it passed the NRA and its allies applied the Swiss Cheese strategy. They got a lot of specific language inserted that built many loop holes into the law. So a simple effective and easy to enforce law was turned into a complicated and hard to enforce law that was much less effective. The other law was a background check law. Again the NRA was able to Swiss Cheese it. The major loop hole is the "gun show exception". This and other exceptions means that 40% of all legal gun sales (and all illegal gun sales) do not involve a background check. We have had a number of massacres that involved people with mental problems. NRA Swiss Cheese provisions have made it difficult to prevent people with mental problems from getting guns. Another loop home is the one that allows people on the terrorist watch list to legally buy guns. I think you can now see why I think both of these laws are wimpy. And, by the way, the assault weapon law had a 10 year "sunset" provision. When it came up in Bush's first term it was not renewed.
So a couple of wimpy anti-gun laws were passed in front of the 1994 elections. And several people who voted for these laws lost their re-election bids. It was generally agreed that being anti-gun was the key factor in a number of these losses. Now the case could be made that elections are complex. So it is unfair to blame the NRA for these losses, the argument goes. But let's look at the record since. There are no cases in the roughly two decades since then where it is generally agreed that a candidate lost because he was too pro-gun. A lot of wildly pro-gun people have run and won. This is the track record that generates the fear politicians have of the political power of the NRA. Interestingly, in the recent election Obama had a better pro-gun record than Romney. But the NRA endorsed Romney and trashed Obama anyhow. So politicians have had good reason to run away from anti-gun legislation.
Then we had the Newtown massacre in which 20 young children were killed. I don't know why all the other massacres had no effect but this one seems to be having a large one. All of a sudden the public seems to have changed its mind. And it seems to have specifically changed its mind on the NRA. The NRA has had something to say after all of the massacres we have had in the last few years. Their statements follow a pattern. The NRA feels bad for the victims. They opine that there are lots of reasons for these massacres (I'm not going to list them all) but none of those reasons involves the ready availability of guns or the lack of regulation of guns or gun owners. This nonsense has worked just fine every time they have done it before. But it seems to be not working this time. There is shock and outrage over the NRA statement all over the place this time. Let me be very clear here. The NRA nonsense this time is exactly the same nonsense as it was every other time. What is different this time around is that the general consensus this time is that it is nonsense. In other words the messaging is not working this time.
That's my case for why we are going through a catastrophic event. And here I am talking about an event that is catastrophic in the mathematical sense and that is a political event. If I am right then this event will drastically rearrange the political landscape. As I said above, a lot of political conflicts are a war of narratives. Generally speaking the Republican narrative has prevailed over the Democratic narrative. This has resulted in the Republican narrative being taken as the foundation and only legitimate way of selecting issues that warrant coverage and the Republican narrative has framed how issues are presented.
A simple example of this is the current budget negotiations. The problem is a big deficit (Republican narrative) rather than a weak economy that needs stimulus (Democratic narrative). I could easily cite a half dozen situations where various problems are framed from a Republican perspective. The Democratic perspective is ignored to a great extent. And, if Republicans don't want to talk about an issue (e.g. the total dysfunction of the Republican caucus in the House, or the cost to the economy of Republican Senate filibusters), the issue becomes invisible. We have seen a massive change in the narrative surrounding the NRA. The beltway media has been slow to move off the Republican perspective on budget negotiation talks. Boehner pulling the "plan B" alternative to negotiating with Obama on the Fiscal Cliff may result in additional change. We'll see. If I am right then the narrative will change. And it will change on a broad range of issues, not just a few.
Given that Republican positions on many positions are wildly unpopular, electoral success could change dramatically too. The messaging machine has been successfully providing cover for Republicans on these issues. If people start distrusting Republican messaging and the media starts properly covering actual Republican positions and actions on these issues, Republicans could become deeply unpopular very quickly. And they are likely to stay unpopular because there are powerful forces that have driven them to take these unpopular positions. Those forces are unlikely to back off. For instance, raising taxes on the wealthy is broadly popular. But House Republicans could not even agree to raise taxes on millionaires (the key provision in plan B). The millionaires that are critical to Republican fund raising efforts are unlikely to change their position on this. The religious conservatives that are behind the Republican hostility to abortion and birth control are unlikely to change their mind. The gun lobby that favors an open market on all things gun is unlikely to change its position. The list goes on and on. And, if the Republicans lose any of these constituencies, they are in trouble. They need the money to fund the message machine. They need the activists in the other camps to do the grunt work in campaigns. So they are pretty much stuck with these peositions for now.
The reaction that most people expect, and here I agree with the consensus, is centered on the likely Republican reaction to electoral losses. The two most recent Republican presidential candidates (McCain and Romney) have been viewed as centrists from within the Republican tent. Many Republicans have concluded that the reason for their failure is that they weren't conservative enough. If this is true then the obvious correction is to put up a true conservative next time. Now people outside the Republican party think that both candidates ran campaigns that were too conservative and not moderate enough. But it is now possible to live within the conservative bubble all the time. So opinions from outside the party and even from outside the hard core conservative movement are unimportant. If the Republicans run candidates that are even more conservative than the current batch then these candidates should lose and by wide margins.
But that's for the future. In the short run watch for the general response to Republican actions. The response to the Newtown massacre and the NRA statement are new territory. So far, the media is continuing to provide at least some cover to the Republican "plan B" fiasco. The more important response is the one of the general public. If the opinion that going over the Fiscal Cliff is a bad thing and is the fault of the Republicans hardens then the media will eventually come around. This will weaken the Republican message machine that is so critical to Republicans. This in turn will further erode support for Republicans. This will first show up in negotiations after the first of the year about how to clean up the Fiscal Cliff mess after the fact. Then we are looking at debt ceiling negotiations in a couple of months. If the response by the public to any Republican hanky panky (anything but a clean bill to raise the ceiling) is immediate and harshly negative then we will know that the contours of the political landscape have changed in a Superstorm Sandy manner. I live in hope.
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