Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications(Politics, History, and Culture)

What induces groups to commit political suicide? This book explores the decisions to surrender power and to legitimate this surrender: collective abdications. Commonsensical explanations impute such actions to coercive pressures, actors' miscalculations, or their contamination by ideologies at odds with group interests. Ivan Ermakoff argues that these explanations are either incomplete or misleading. Focusing on two paradigmatic cases of voluntary and unconditional surrender of power -- the passing of an enabling bill granting Hitler the right to amend the Weimar constitution without parliamentary supervision (March 1933), and the transfer of full executive, legislative, and constitutional powers to Marshal Petain (Vichy, France, July 1940) -- Ruling Oneself Out recasts abdication as the outcome of a process of collective alignment. Ermakoff distinguishes several mechanisms of alignment in troubled and uncertain times and assesses their significance through a fine-grained examination of actors' beliefs, shifts in perceptions and subjective states.To this end, he draws on the analytical and methodological resources of perspectives that usually stand apart: primary historical research, formal decision theory, the phenomenology of group processes, quantitative analyses, and the hermeneutics of testimonies. In elaborating this dialogue across disciplinary boundaries, Ruling Oneself Out restores the complexity and indeterminate character of highly consequential collective decisions and demonstrates that an in-depth historical exploration can lay bare processes of crucial importance for understanding the formation of political preferences, the paradox of self-deception, and the make-up of historical events as highly consequential.

Table of Contents:
List of Tables vii List of Figures ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xxxi A Note on Citations xxxv Part I: The Stage and the Problem 1 1. Actors and Events 3 2. Constitutional Abdication 37 Part II: Subservience, Common Sense 59 3. Coercion 61 4. Miscalculation 92 5. Ideological Collusion 131 Part III: The Terms of the Challenge 179 6. Collective Alignment: Three Processes 181 7. Diffusion 211 Part IV: Collective Stances 243 8. The Production of Consent 245 9. Vacillations, Convergence 277 Part V: Coda: Judgments of Significance 305 10. The Consistency of Inconsistency 307 11. The Event as Statement 323 Appendix A: Counts and Accounts 333 Appendix B: A Two-Pronged Model of Alignment 346 Bibliography 369 Index 393

About the Author :
Ivan Ermakoff is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Review :
"In this innovative book, Ivan Ermakoff combines game theory with detailed archival research to provide a brilliant and surprising interpretation of a long-standing historical puzzle. Ruling Oneself Out opens new vistas for the sociological study of historical events."--William H. Sewell Jr., University of Chicago "Ruling Oneself Out reads like a novel: we hear the voices of the protagonists, enter their minds, and emerge with an understanding of a fascinating theoretical puzzle. Drawing on richly documented primary sources, employing state-of-the-art analytical tools, and carefully staking theoretical claims, Ivan Ermakoff makes intelligible events that shook world history. A remarkable achievement."--Adam Przeworski, New York University "Ruling Oneself Out is a tour de force, a compelling contribution to our understanding of two of the most troubling moments of the past century and the more general phenomenon of democratic representation and its retention."--David D. Laitin, Stanford University