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13 J. Conflict Resol. 1 (1969)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr13 and id is 1 raw text is: Political stability and instability: some manifestations and JAMES C. DAVIES Department of Political Science, University of Oregon There is a wealth of ignorance and a poverty of knowledge about the symptoms and origins of political instability and its consequences. Apparent stability sometimes precedes explosive change that profoundly alters basic political institutions. Apparent instability sometimes precedes gradual and not very profound change. If instability and stability form a continuum, like heat and cold, the ignorance of why stable societies are stable is just as great and should be twice as disconcerting to social scientists who do not know why the stable societies they live in are stable. Most of the writing that sometimes pre- cedes and always follows notable changes in polities leads to wordy inconclusions, or it amounts to nonexplanatory, ad hoc ex- planations. One can come almost to the false conclusion that historians and social scientists alike are able to produce only post hoc explanations. In helping under- stand the past, historians do help explain both it and the future, and so do social scientists. Both can improve their work by looking for deeper, more widely applicable causes. 1 The tabulations in this article are the result of the patient labor of my graduate assistant, Barry H. Barlow. Financial support for the field research came from the Institute of Interna- tional Studies at the University of Oregon and for the statistical work from the Office of Scientitific and Scholarly Research at Oregon. causes1 Most individuals are unable to explain why they do much of what they do as citizens, husbands, wives, employees, em- ployers, or whatever. Social scientists are at times a little better able to explain the behavior of individuals, and the marginal difference in ability is critical. In some ways it is even more difficult to explain the behavior of categories and groups of indi- viduals on any but superficial levels. If an individual cannot say why he loves or hates or hugs or hits another individual, it may seem impossible to say why a public talks or acts in a friendly or hostile manner toward its own government. Two historic cases illustrate the difficulty. In reviewing them briefly I shall try to show what reasoning underlay the design of the research to be reported here. As historians and social scientists now see it, the 1936 election in the United States is one of the easiest to explain. Serious eco- nomic reversal in 1929 rapidly became the Great Depression. The political response in 1932 was to replace the incumbent Repub- lican party and President. As the Demo- cratic party candidate, Franklin Roosevelt in 1932 received 57 percent of the total vote cast for all candidates. The New Deal fired the public imagination. By 1936 the mood of despair early in the depression had passed. There was now no call for a change. FDR was a shoo-in.

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