Natural and artificial geographic systems and voting

[Beet]

Artificial systems:



The artificial system is a rational imposition on the physical world. It is spatially distributed into networks, resulting in clustering.

Natural systems:



Natural systems also exhibit an ordering in their spatial distribution, but the distribution is different from that of clustered networks.

*** *** ***

Now away from geography for a moment.

As technology progresses, the knowledge aspect of existence becomes a larger and larger share of explanatory variables over time (determining, for example, productivity and residence); and "natural" or physical/resource components thus shrink. Thus, technology changes the underpinnings of a person's mode of existence.

Politics, and voting, is a form of human behavior; which reflects the nature of the person's existence.

Without getting into exactly how a person's mode of existence affects behavior in any particular instance, let us assume that some effect exists and reduce the problem into its simplest possible form: the binary. In other words, let us assume that some cleavage in political behavior exists in society. There must be a cleavage, but there can be no more than one. We can say that some component of this political cleavage is determined by modes of existence.

At this point it is natural to ask how changes in technology, which changes the component makeup of one's mode of existence, also change the cleavage in political behavior. Specifically, how does an increase in the artificial inputs to one's mode of existence change that existence so as to change the cleavage within it (and by extension the cleavage in political behavior)?

One easily measurable answer lies back in geography, which is relevant to this website.

As we saw, artificial systems are spatially distrbuted differently than geographic systems. When the artificial component of the mode of existence increases, we can then expect, from a geographic standpoint, that the geographic clustering of modes of existence will change.

Further, we can expect a somewhat directly proportional relationship between the two if we assume that the spatial distribution of modes of existence is directly tied to the makeup of its artificial vs. natural component balance. This is easy to see theoretically since low-technology existence is highly dependent on the enviornmental factors such as the availability of animals to hunt or food to gather in an area; or later the suitability of an area to crops. While high-technology existence is not dependent on such factors, and largely dependent on artificial factors such as the presence of jobs in the area.

Thus, we have
1. A very large part of the cleavage in political behavior is determined by one's mode of existence (one's economic interests and residential location; these reflect both economic and social characteristics).
2. The cleavage in one's mode of existence is heavily influenced with regards to certain characteristics by the artificial versus natural balance between the inputs to that existence.
3. Therefore, the cleavage in one's political behavior with regard to those same characteristics is heavily influenced by the artificial/natural component of the mode of existence.
3. As technology increases, the artificial inputs are an increasingly large percentage of those inputs; we would expect political cleavage with regard to the characteristic to change in tandem with the expected direction of the change as we move towards artificially determined modes production.
4. One characteristic that fits the above three statements is the spatial distribution of the political cleavage.

Therefore, we would expect, as the modes of existence become increasingly artificially determined, that the political cleavage's geographic characteristics increasingly reflect artificially organized differences in the mode of production, as opposed to natural ones.

Now, let us look compare the spatial distribution of artificial and natural inputs with those of voting behavior over time. Artificial inputs would be spatially distributed around the "hub" of the system; or in our case cities and towns (represented by high population). We would expect voting cleavages to be dependent on population density. Natural inputs would be spatially distrbuted around geographic areas as they pertain to modes of existence; or in our case the crops that can be grown in a certain area (represented by growing season):

2004 Compared to Population:



1920 Compared to Growing Season:

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[Filuwaúrdjan]

Great post; very interesting

Is there a bigger version of this map:



?

[Beet]

Great post; very interesting

Is there a bigger version of this map:



?

Thank you Al. I have been trying to get a better image of average growing season length among the major crops but the plant hardiness was the closest I could find. It does not really take into account rainfall, which is very low in the west and thus the West coast looks the same as the south, but for agricultural purposes only the southeast is extremely fertile for cash crops.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

There's probably a growing season map in some books; might be hard to get though.

On this general subject, a while back I did a little thing comparing U.K voting patterns with a geological map; some very interesting things came up with that.

[Beet]

There's probably a growing season map in some books; might be hard to get though.

On this general subject, a while back I did a little thing comparing U.K voting patterns with a geological map; some very interesting things came up with that.

Did you post anything about it on Atlas? From a very casual observations, the coal industry in the north is probably responsible for Labour voting patterns there, and the decline of that industry might shift U.K. cleavages more towards the same urban-suburban split trend you see in the U.S.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Did you post anything about it on Atlas?

No. I will post an expanded version soon though

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes and no (for one thing the decline of coal hasn't shifted voting patterns all that much in the older coalfields; the population has (mostly) stayed even though the jobs have gone; and another thing is all the overspill estates in what are *technically* suburban areas).

[muon2]

To make any meaningful or interesting statement, you need to look at real correlations. All I see so far are maps of distributions. They may be interesting in and of themselves, but I can't draw a conclusion directly from them. I'm curious to see where you think the technological distribution will alter the existing geographic patterns.
 

[Beet]

To make any meaningful or interesting statement, you need to look at real correlations. All I see so far are maps of distributions. They may be interesting in and of themselves, but I can't draw a conclusion directly from them. I'm curious to see where you think the technological distribution will alter the existing geographic patterns.

I thought this was interesting, but haven't quantified this, so no, you can't draw direct conclusions, though it certainly would be possible to quantify with the necessary work and data gathering and it would almost certainly yield something. Perhaps Al has done something of the sort.

This is a look at a process that we are already at the tail end of already, as apparent from the maps. Most of it is historical. Most people already know that population density is now heavily correlated with vote choice.

The "IT" revolution has so far not changed the geography of population distribution in terms of how the biggest cleavages are structured. It has moved the population more towards the sunbelt (also for reasons that could be related to the geography of why industry originally developed in the northeast), but over the long term, I would hypothesize that somone living in the outer suburbs of, say, Dallas has more in common with someone living in the outer suburbs of New Hampshire than they do with someone living in central Dallas. When I say "in common" I mean partly economic and partly sociological. You can tell a lot about both factors based on where they live (and also possibly, what profession they are, but that's a separate discussion. the geographic characteristic is interesting here because Dave's and Bob's maps are here).

So mostly, this study does not point out the cleavage in vote choice based on population density, but tries to look at some of the more basic causes of it, and point out why that might be expected to continue to grow, for both economic and sociological reasons; and especially in the newer stages of industrialization to replace divisions within different agricultural modes of living and working, for a country that spans diverse growing seasons. If it can be generalized across other democracies with lengthy histories, that would be spectacular.

[WMS]

I look forward to any conclusions you come to.