The focus of the experimental literature in political science has generally been on voters, choosing among alternatives, rather than candidates, choosing among platforms. Yet it is obvious that candidates are a key part of the political process in a representative democracy. Further, the predictions of equilibrium theories, and theories based on broader solution concepts such as the “uncovered set,” make no logical distinctions between alternatives and platforms. The implication is that there should be few, if any, important differences in results between the two contexts. Finally, most existing literature has investigated the conditions under which subjects can find equilibrium, when it exists. How do human how subjects electoral handle complexity, when there is no equilibrium?
This research uses experimental methods, involving human subjects as challengers facing static (fixed incumbent) or dynamic (mobile artificial intelligence candidate(s)) spatial election problems, to test a set of hypotheses about candidate behavior. The main theses involve the use of information, and the extent, and range, of learning. The primary dependent variable is the performance of the human subject in solving the platform location problem. The actual measure to be used is the ratio of the actual vote received given the selected platform to the vote associated with the optimal platform given the position of the incumbent. Experimental manipulations include information levels, payoffs, number of candidates, and number of voters.
We use a graphical computer simulation (designed by Scott de Marchi) of an election, in which voters are completely characterized by an ideal point and a spatial preference metric in two dimensions. Voter locations are visually depicted as a point in this space; clusters of points represent areas of high preference concentration. The opponent’s location xO is indicated by a graphical token. Under what circumstances will human subjects solve this problem? Ex ante, it is clear that a hierarchy of “solutions” exist: (1) Choose that (potentially nonunique) platform that maximizes vote received, given xO; (2) Choose (using some heuristic, such as “locate near the other guy, but toward the center) an element of the “win set” of xO, so that the subjects wins the election but does not maximize the vote; or (3) Choose (in effect) randomly, either out of boredom, frustration, or simple confusion.
The central theoretical claims of the proposed research are these:
The first set of experiments, including both a control and an experimental
group, have been completed. The data and
a summary of the preliminary results will be published soon in this
space.
For MS-EXCEL files containing preliminary data collections, go to North Carolina Court Cases; to see variable descriptions, go to NC CODEBOOK.
This is a long term project on origins and effects of American racism.
By “racism,” we intend something very specific: the set of attitudes
(1) exhibited by whites and other non-Africans, (2) toward African slaves
and black freemen living in the continental U.S., which (3) center on the
notion that Africans living in the U.S. are either less than, or other
than, human.
Obviously, there are many other kinds of racism, which might
be more neutrally defined as “prejudice toward other races.”
When used in this sense, the word loses the essence of the meaning needed
to understand American racism, especially the racism of the American South.
The heart of our argument is that the region’s racism is peculiar, but
that this very peculiarity lends itself to analysis which can help understand
racism’s origins and evolution. Our thesis is that racism is a specialized
ideology, which was first devised, and later evolved, to serve two conflicting,
and perhaps irreconcilable, purposes.
First, the ideology of racism served a legal-economic purpose. Racism legitimated the treatment of slaves among southern whites, thereby taking debates about the maintenance of the “peculiar institution” off the region’s domestic political agenda. It therefore helped preserve the value of property rights in the permanent labor services of African slaves on plantations and in the related activities to which they were assigned in the “slave” states and territories. This value, which has been estimated as ranging from $1.5 billion to $2 billion, was a significant part of the equity value of the southern economy. The loss of this value would have bankrupted the southern elite of planters and lenders overnight.
Second, racism allowed slave owners to resolve a knotty spiritual problem. Nearly all slave owners considered themselves, and by appearances were, Christians. Many were devout, and studied the Bible for guidelines on how to live their lives. The ideology of racism allowed slave owners to live with the contradiction between owning slaves and being Christian. Racism portrayed Africans slaves as being less than human (and therefore requiring care, as a positive duty of the slave owner, as a man cares for his children, who cannot care for themselves), or else as being other than human (and therefore being spiritually no different from cattle or horses, and therefore requiring only the same considerations for maintenance and good treatment).
The notion that slaves were less than, or other than, human protected the property interests of slave owners, and preserved the ability of slave owners to be perceived, and to perceive themselves, as moral beings. Ultimately, we intend to show that ideological edifice was constructed, over the period 1800 to 1860, in three forums still available for scrutiny today. Our research will consider (a) the legitimating rationales used to justify decisions in state supreme courts in tort or rights cases, (b) both debates about, and statutory descriptions of, the place of slaves in southern society, and (c) a sampling of editorial statements, and newspaper descriptions of events, in major newspapers. However, for the purposes of this paper, our goals will be much less ambitious. In this paper, we simply argue that the development of the southern states’ civil law, combined with elites’ pre-existing conception of the nature of their black labor force, justified the ideology of racism, in which slavery was viewed as a positive good.
To describe the transformation of southern political thought, we rely on at least three different strains of research in political science. We begin by drawing from the theory of ideology to describe the conditions necessary for the development of an ideology of racism. The new institutionalism is then used to provide a unifying framework to study the factors that shaped the broader antebellum social, economic, and political environment in a manner consistent with the theory of ideology. In particular, we argue that the courts, an institution heretofore under-appreciated by proponents of the new institutionalism, plays a crucial role in providing the consistency necessary for the emergence of an ideology of racism. Finally, we turn to the analytic narrative, a technique that combines theoretical claims, based on the analysis of the goals and strategic interaction of key actors as a “game,” with detailed historical research that supports, or contradicts, the implications of the equilibrium prediction derived from the game. Our analytic narrative seeks to explain the strategic choices of slave-owners and jurists in the creation of a legal system that provided social protections for slaves that whites could not even enjoy. The combination of these approaches offers unique insight into the co-evolution of the South’s social, economic, and political institutions with the region’s racist ideology.