Political Instability, Partisan Politics and the Emergence of the Slavery Issue: The Riker Thesis Reconsidered.

In this paper we reconsider the Riker thesis on the emergence of the slavery issue. We understand the central proposition of Riker?s analysis in the same terms as does Weingast, who defines ?the Riker thesis? as: ?the political use of slavery to break up the intersectional [Democratic] coalition of NW [northwest] and S [south]? (Weingast 1998, 164). Unlike Riker?s severest critics, we are inclined to accept his theoretical claims regarding the potential for political instability in democratic regimes and the opportunities this instability may present for astute political leaders. However, we think Riker errs in systematically understating the importance of ideas as opposed to strategic interests or calculations of politicians in causing the emergence of the slavery issue and generating disequilibrium in the 1850s. In this paper our primary objective is to raise a series of questions that we believe pose major challenges to the Riker thesis and point toward the need to revise Riker?s theory of issue selection in democracies to incorporate greater attention to the importance of ideas, especially ideas about fundamental principles underlying democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]