Punctuated equilibrium is a model of how evolutionary change happens. Like how raising taxes can help poor people in economic theory, it is an often-misinterpreted model but means that evolutionary change can take place in short periods of time - huge jumps associated with speciation events.
It basically was created by paleontologists Niles Eldridge and Stephen Jay Gould to account for why there are sometimes no transitional fossils for drastic changes in a species, and the reasons are the small population size, the rapid pace of change, and their isolated location - plus, fossilization is tricky business and requires a lot of things to go right.
Punctuated equilibrium is an interesting idea, though there is a lot more gradual, non-punctuated, evolution in the fossil record, but some took it to mean it was an alternative to natural selection or make yet another claim that Darwin was somehow wrong.
Evolution, like economics, is complex and difficult even for experts so it can be easy to misunderstand and over-interpret events. Dan Vergano, writing in USA Today, notes that the punctuated equilibrium concept may have had more impact on political science than evolution, not because politicians care about isolated mollusks but because periods of stasis and then isolation can lead to rapid change and strong selection in periods too.
The early 1990s are an example he uses. After 25 years of stagnation and 50 years of domination by one side in Congress politics - Reagan cut taxes but could not make them cut spending, for example - voters threw out a bunch of politicians and in a short period the economy rebounded, spending reforms were instituted and a President in trouble in 1993 got easily re-elected in 1994.
If you're mentally making a parallel to politics of today, punctuated equilibrium offers little hope - it doesn't predict change, it simply accounts for it. So there is no guarantee the same inflection point will happen now as happened in 1994 and a balanced budget amendment will get passed and we will have economic balloons and ponies in a magical place from here on out. Without prediction, it isn't great science.
Moveon.org is largely irrelevant today, though they claimed credit for getting control of Congress again for Democrats in 2006 and the media agreed. So it may go with the Tea Party; sometimes species that are isolated and do not adapt simply die out. Obviously this goes for presidents as well - Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush could not adapt but Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon could.
In his article, Vergano cites political scientist Bryan Jones of the University of Texas, who says gun control may be a punctuated equilibrium event waiting to happen because of recent events, though that could also easily also apply to abortion and deficit spending - they are all stagnant positions few people really think about and seem to be unable to change.
Big things may change, and they may be surprising, but neither side should be expecting it should fall their way - peripatric speciation may do something weird instead because voters, both conservatives and progressives, are a lot smarter and a lot savvier than they are given credit for by people on the other side.
Paleontology points to political punctuations By Dan Vergano, USA TODAY
