POLITICAL RHETORIC AND STRATEGIC CHOICE IN THE RATIFICATION CONVENTIONS ON THE U.S. CONSTITUTION (UNITED STATES, MASSACHUSETTS, NEW YORK, SOUTH CAROLINA)

Social choice models of voting decisions presume that voters do not change their preferences over the alternatives. Any change that occurs in the decision is the result of either some manipulation of a cycle of preferences, exploitation of institutions, or sophisticated voting. Social choice models generally, and the spatial model of voting in particular, do not allow for persuasion. This dissertation claims that political rhetoric can be used to manipulate decisions. It argues that traditional rhetoric as political argument is a necessary component of modeling political decision-making in order to predict change in democratic politics.;Chapters four through seven present case studies on three ratification conventions in 1788 on the U.S. Constitution: Massachusetts, South Carolina, and New York. In each, the role of rhetoric in the achievement of the final vote tally is highlighted. In some instances persuasion was found crucial to the final outcomes; in others, it was less important. One finding is that successful persuasion often instigates the development of modifications in the alternative set. Where persuasion was successful, the techniques of political rhetoric modeled in the first half of the dissertation can be revealed in the arguments over the Constitution.;The framework of single-person statistical decision theory is used to model the possibilities for persuasion. Choices over policies and institutions are assumed to be driven by preferences over outcomes and the technology of predicting outcomes from the alternatives is probabilistic. The instrumentality of choice is exacerbated by choices over institutions since they are assumed to affect outcomes indirectly by restricting the range of future policy chocies. The spatial choice model collapses the outcome space onto the alternative space and thus ignores the potential for persuasion. Political rhetoric alters a person's prediction of outcomes from the alternatives. More concretely, the role of persuasion is divided into four parts. These parts are persuasion over the facts of the choice, the causal relationship, the perception of the state of nature, and the goals relevant to the decision. A social choice model is presented using these types.