{"id":6644,"date":"2011-07-27T10:29:02","date_gmt":"2011-07-27T14:29:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/collideascape\/?p=6644"},"modified":"2011-07-27T10:29:02","modified_gmt":"2011-07-27T14:29:02","slug":"the-theory-of-punctuated-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/?p=6644","title":{"rendered":"The Theory of Punctuated Politics"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> 
<a href="https://rgprincipal.com/company-overview/">https://rgprincipal.com/company-overview/</a> What does the theory of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Punctuated_equilibrium\" target=\"_blank\">punctuated equilibrium<\/a> have to do with modern-day American politics? Dan Vergano of USA Today has an intriguing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/tech\/science\/columnist\/vergano\/2011-07-24-paleontology-politics_n.htm\" target=\"_blank\">piece<\/a> that makes the connection:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p> 
<a href="https://raceflowdevelopment.com/services/">https://raceflowdevelopment.com/services/</a> In the 1990&#8217;s, amid widespread complaints of &#8220;<a onclick=\"window.open('','popup729','width=770,height=483,left=0,top=0,resizable,scrollbars=no')\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/washington\/2011-07-18-poll-politicians-approval_n.htm\" target=\"popup729\">gridlock<\/a>&#8221; in Washington, the notion of political punctuated equilibrium &#8220;was born from dissatisfaction with the idea of everything being fixed and unchanging in politics,&#8221; [University of Texas political scientist Bryan] Jones says. Political scientists who looked at our institutions broadly saw big changes coming relatively slowly from public pressure, which led to politicians finally voting for new laws.<\/p>\n<p> 
<a href="http://www.amandasatoz.com/?page_id=1536">http://www.amandasatoz.com/?page_id=1536</a> But in reality at the time, big changes were arriving suddenly, without big changes in voter sentiment, after long periods of well, equilibrium. A good example is the\u00a0<a onclick=\"window.open('','popup729','width=770,height=483,left=0,top=0,resizable,scrollbars=no')\" href=\"http:\/\/www.brookings.edu\/articles\/2001\/summer_welfare_downey.aspx\" target=\"popup729\">welfare reform<\/a>\u00a0of the mid-90&#8217;s, says political scientist\u00a0<a onclick=\"window.open('','popup729','width=770,height=483,left=0,top=0,resizable,scrollbars=no')\" href=\"http:\/\/www.pitt.edu\/~politics\/faculty\/peters.html\" target=\"popup729\">B. Guy Peters<\/a>\u00a0of the\u00a0<a title=\"More news, photos about University of Pittsburgh\" href=\"http:\/\/content.usatoday.com\/topics\/topic\/Organizations\/Schools\/University+of+Pittsburgh\">University of Pittsburgh<\/a>. &#8220;The laws and ideas behind them were put in place decades earlier with only small changes and then suddenly you had a big one,&#8221; Peters says. &#8220;That&#8217;s a punctuation.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> 
<a href="https://blackhillsballoons.com/experience/">Order Zopiclone Online</a> A more recent example is the\u00a0<a onclick=\"window.open('','popup729','width=770,height=483,left=0,top=0,resizable,scrollbars=no')\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/nation\/2011-01-04-food-safety_N.htm\" target=\"popup729\">food safety reforms<\/a>\u00a0of last year, Jones says. Food safety laws had dated back to the 1930&#8217;s without big changes. The basic idea is that things often continue in government with only incremental changes until something &#8220;\u201d an idea catching fire or a scandal, the comet impact of politics &#8220;\u201d suddenly makes big things happen. In food safety, decades of recalls had only resulted in small fixes to rules. But the food safety reform bill giving more power to the Food and Drug Administration<a onclick=\"window.open('','popup729','width=770,height=483,left=0,top=0,resizable,scrollbars=no')\" href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/news\/washington\/2010-11-30-food-safety-senate_N.htm\" target=\"popup729\">passed the Senate<\/a>\u00a0last year by a 73-25 vote, even though it hadn&#8217;t been an issue until a salmonella scare the previous year shook things up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> 
<a href="https://theroyalstagproperties.com/our-team/">https://theroyalstagproperties.com/our-team/</a> Similar examples can be found in seminal environmental legislation, such as 1964&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wilderness.net\/index.cfm?fuse=NWPS&amp;sec=legisAct\" target=\"_blank\">Wilderness Act<\/a>, of which was the culmination of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/wildfoundation\/history-of-the-wilderness-act\" target=\"_blank\">decades of groundwork<\/a> by an influential group of advocates, writers, and interest groups (such as The Sierra Club and the Wilderness Society).<\/p>\n<p> 
<a href="http://masterfacilitator.com/worldcafefacilitation/">Order Xanax No Prescription</a> One piece of legislation that has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.sciencemag.org\/content\/330\/6001\/166.1.summary\" target=\"_blank\">transformed<\/a> the science of archaeology, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Native_American_Graves_Protection_and_Repatriation_Act\" target=\"_blank\">NAGPRA<\/a>), also seemed to come out of nowhere in 1990. But it sprang from a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=caCUX3SWSFs\" target=\"_blank\">long-festering history<\/a> and a <a href=\"http:\/\/archaeology.about.com\/cs\/ethicsandlaw\/a\/russell.htm\" target=\"_blank\">series of smaller events<\/a> in the early to mid-1970s.<\/p>\n<p> 
<a href="https://prosthodontistlasvegas.com/dental-check-up-in-las-vegas/">Buy Xanax Online Overnight</a> With respect to climate change, the du jour environmental issue of the day, I suspect that something similarly momentous will happen in the near future, despite the increasingly polarized state of U.S. politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> 
<a href="https://www.secpeinvestments.com/sreach/">https://www.secpeinvestments.com/sreach/</a> What does the theory of punctuated equilibrium have to do with modern-day American politics? Dan Vergano of USA Today has an intriguing piece that makes the connection: In the 1990&#8217;s, amid widespread complaints of &#8220;gridlock&#8221; in Washington, the notion of political punctuated equilibrium &#8220;was born from dissatisfaction with the idea of everything being fixed and&#8230;<span> <a href="https://castlehomecomfort.com/heating/"></a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/?p=6644\">Continue Reading&#8230;<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2470,2553,2915],"tags":[700,835,1488],"class_list":["post-6644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archaeology","category-climate-change","category-politics","tag-archaeology","tag-climate-change","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6644\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.keithkloor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}