A Political Model of Social Evolution

Almost all democratic societies evolved socially and politically out of authoritarian and nondemocratic regimes, often as a result of revolutionary changes, illustrating the possibility of successful social evolution following major political changes. These changes not only altered the allocation of economic resources in society but also the structure of political power. Key actors demanding and agreeing to these political changes understood and cared about their short-term consequences, but not necessarily the entire sequence of events that they would unleash. In this paper, we develop a framework for studying the dynamics of political and social change that alter the balance of power in society, thus paving the way for future changes. The society consists of agents that care about current and future social arrangements and allocations which comprise of economic as well as social elements; allocation of political power determines which groups of agents have the capacity to implement changes in economic allocations and future allocations of power. Agents are forward-looking but discount the future so that they care only a limited amount about changes in the far future. The set of available social rules and allocations at any point in time is stochastic. We show that political and social change may happen without any stochastic shocks or as a result of a shock destabilizing an otherwise stable social arrangement. Crucially, the process of social change is “contingent” (and history dependent) in the sense that the timing and sequence of stochastic events determines the long run equilibrium social arrangements. For example, the extent of democratization may depend on how early uncertainty about the set of feasible reforms in the future is resolved.