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It is argued that, for large electorates, the operation of direct democracy is well-behaved in the sense of possessing a stable equilibrium. Drawing on the rational-choice political economy literature & the example of the European Council of Ministers, a model of representative democracy is proposed based on the notion of a political heart, defined as a geometric version of an uncovered set of preferences. It is suggested that formal institutional rules allow the computation of the heart between a given set of actors if that dimension is below the institutionally determined instability dimension. In this case, outcomes may be expected to lie in the heart determined by the structure of the rules. Application of this model to data on the US electorate reveals that it successfully predicts a stable outcome. Based on these findings, it is asserted that, barring a political game that resembles a zero-sum situation, representative institutions are able to produce centrist outcomes that tend toward stability. 1 Table, 11 Figures. D. M. Smith

One criterion for evaluating a nation's military structure is its impact on crisis stability. This article presents a model to capture the process of interacting expectations that determines whether initial suspicions are sufficient to cause one or both nations to strike rather than wait during a crisis. The model can be used to assess the impact on crisis stability of specific changes in military structure. For example, the impact of a population defense depends on whether it is "thin,""thick," or "brick." Also, the verification requirements of an offensive weapons arms control agreement affect crisis stability.

Ensuring looked-after children have a stable care placement, social worker and school place is vital to good outcomes, so Ofsted places great emphasis on stability when it inspects children's services, writes Jo Stephenson

There is no consensus about the causes of the reduction in business cycle volatility seen in many major economies over the last decade. Using stylised models of the economies of the US, Euro area, UK and Japan, we argue that economic stability has been fostered by improved monetary policy and by associated changes in the behaviour of inflation, which has itself led to a reduction in the volatility of economic shocks. Assuming an absence of cataclysmic events, our projections suggest that most major economies should continue to enjoy an unusual degree of stability.

This article aims to show the mathematical contexts out of which emerged Solow's 1957 article "Technical Change and the Aggregate Production Function." In particular, it seeks to provide some understanding of its most striking feature, namely, the highly aggregate level on which technical change is discussed and the simple way in which it is represented. The approach is similar to Weintraub's (1991) contextualization of Samuelson's Foundations of Economic Analysis (1947), but it will map out the two mathematical contexts in which Solow's 1957 article can be located. Samuelson's concepts of stability provided Solow the tools for the aggregation of technical change. However, Samuelson's concepts were defined in relation to static equilibrium and not to growth. To arrive at his 1957 representation of technical change, Solow successfully applied P. H. Leslie's concepts and tools of population mathematics. The main mathematical concepts around which this development is described are eigenvalue and eigenvector. It is by the use of these two concepts that aggregation of input-output tables was made feasible.