The values divide between materialists and postmaterialists, first identified by Ronald Inglehart, continues to define the evolution of partisan loyalties in the United States. Contemporary analysis of voting behavior within the White working-class incorporates the debate between a revisionist school that identifies a contemporary electoral battleground inverted from that of the New Deal era and a traditionalist school that maintains the class alignment established during the New Deal largely remains in effect. The following case study investigating voting behavior in Pennsylvania at the precinct level allows the application of empirical data to identify trends in partisan identity. The study concludes that there is significant evidence that the class loyalties as determinants of partisan attachment established by the New Deal have been superseded by values-driven imperatives. Accordingly, traditionally Democratic, materialist blue-collar constituencies in southwestern Pennsylvania have moved towards the Republican Party, while the opposite has occurred in the traditionally Republican postmaterialist white-collar constituencies of southeastern Pennsylvania. Given the underlying demographics, the Democratic Party has been the net winner from this transfer of allegiances.

In this essay I will attempt to account for the failure of state formation on Pitcairn Island by the Bounty mutineers in 1790. I will track the course of the mutiny itself, the settlement on Pitcairn, and the ensuing collapse of the polity. I will list the proximate reasons for this outcome, including gender imbalance, a racially stratified social order and the absence of representative conflict resolution mechanisms. I conclude that the ultimate cause for the anarchic quality of life on Pitcairn is the distinctive contribution of its effectively perfect geopolitical isolation. This historical exemplar should serve as a warning to the would-be founding fathers of the future if the next wave of human colonization commences with the possible establishment of settlements in the even greater isolation of outer space.

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