Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

政治学博士论文研究

• 批准号: 8817862
• 负责人: Albert Cover
• 金额: $ 0.73万
• 依托单位: SUNY at Stony Brook
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1989
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1989-03-01 至 1990-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=8817862&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

The manner in which legislators gain office has implications for democratic theory. Modern political science equates representation with policy responsiveness. But if service responsiveness looms largely in the contemporary representative-constituent relationship, perhaps much of what legislators do and constituents want is not representation. Coherent national policy can be difficult to achieve when individual legislators have little incentive to subordinate service responsiveness to a larger end. The problem, from the standpoint of assigning political responsibility, is the reduced ability to produce coherent policy decisions. By accident or intent, representational trade-offs exist. If responsiveness to the individual needs of the ordinary citizen waxes, party responsiveness, as well as the representation of the collectivity wanes. Studies concerning the ways in which legislators sustain or increase their constituent support have often contradicted one another and have resulted in differing conclusions. The major limitation of this literature is that most, if not all, of the data on perquisites are highly aggregated, and district level data are often unavailable.. In this investigation the researcher addresses these problems, and takes advantage of access to data on actual constituent-member contacts to observe and record two groups of respondents, one that had candidate contact and one that has not. Data are from 1,100 telephone interviews in a selected legislative district. The study probes the impact of legislative perquisites on constituent evaluations (i.e., incumbent reputation and constituent trust) as well as voting decisions. It focuses on a particular perquisite, ombudsmen service as the provision of assistance to individuals to resolve a problem with a federal agency. Using simulatneous equation modeling, hypotheses tested will reveal how legislators' use of perquisites to encourage and perform casework affect constituent evaluations and voting decisions. Results will illuminate how constituents respond to incumbent behavior. The resulting effects on contemporary representative-constituent relationships and the "repsonsible parties" model of government will also be addressed.

立法者当选的方式对民主理论有影响。现代政治学将代表权等同于政策响应性。但是，如果服务响应性在很大程度上笼罩在当代代表-选民关系中，或许立法者所做的和选民想要的很大程度上不是代表权。当个别立法者没有动力将服务响应服从于更大的目的时，连贯的国家政策可能很难实现。从分配政治责任的角度来看，问题在于制定连贯的政策决策的能力下降。无论是偶然还是有意，都存在代表性的权衡。如果对普通公民个人需求的响应度上升，政党的响应度以及集体的代表性就会减弱。关于立法者维持或增加其选民支持的方式的研究往往相互矛盾，并导致不同的结论。这本文献的主要局限性是，大部分(如果不是全部)关于额外津贴的数据都是高度汇总的，而且地区级别的数据往往不可用。在这项调查中，研究人员解决了这些问题，并利用访问实际成员联系人的数据来观察和记录两组受访者，一组有候选人联系人，另一组没有候选人联系人。数据来自一个选定的立法选区的1100个电话采访。这项研究探讨了立法特权对选民评估(即现任声誉和选民信任)以及投票决定的影响。它侧重于一种特殊的、申诉专员服务，即向个人提供援助，以解决与联邦机构的问题。使用模拟方程模型，测试的假设将揭示立法者使用额外津贴来鼓励和执行个案工作如何影响选民评估和投票决定。结果将阐明选民如何回应现任总统的行为。还将讨论由此产生的对当代代表--选民关系和“负责任的政党”政府模式的影响。