Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

立法者获得职位的方式对以下方面有影响： 民主理论 现代政治学将代表权等同于 政策响应。 但如果服务响应性迫在眉睫， 主要是在当代的代表-组成关系中， 也许立法者所做的和选民所想要的， 表示. 连贯一致的国家政策可能难以实现 当个别立法者几乎没有动机服从 服务响应能力更强。 问题，从 分配政治责任的观点，是减少 有能力作出连贯的政策决定。 无论是意外还是故意， 存在代表性的权衡。 如果对个人的反应 普通公民的需求，党的响应，以及 集体的代表性减弱。 关于立法者维持或增加的方式的研究 他们的选民支持往往相互矛盾， 得出了不同的结论。 这其中最大的局限是 文学是大多数，如果不是全部的话，关于额外津贴的数据是 高度汇总，地区一级的数据往往无法获得。 在这次调查中，研究人员解决了这些问题， 利用对实际选民-成员联系人数据的访问 观察并记录两组受访者，一组有候选人， 一个是接触，一个是没有。 数据来自1，100次电话采访 在一个选定的立法区。 该研究探讨了 关于选民评价的立法特权（即，现任 信誉和成分信任）以及投票决定。 它 侧重于一个特殊的额外津贴，监察员服务， 协助个人解决与联邦政府的问题 社 使用simulatneous方程建模，假设测试将揭示如何 立法者利用额外津贴鼓励和执行个案工作 影响选民评价和投票决定。 结果将 阐明选民如何对现任者的行为作出反应。 的 对当代代表性选民的影响 政府意志的“负责任的政党”模式 也要解决。

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.