Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

理性选民的标准观点是投票给在意识形态或议题方面与选民立场最接近的政党或候选人。近年来，一个高度复杂的研究机构探索了选民、候选人和政党的意识形态结构或“议题空间”以及它们之间的联系。这项研究的一个重要成果是一系列理论，这些理论表明，选举中选出最接近选民理想的候选人的成功程度在很大程度上受到所使用的选举制度类型的影响。然而，到目前为止，大多数关于空间理论的研究都集中在只有两名候选人的美国式多数选举上。该奖项支持旨在测试多候选人选举中投票空间理论有效性的博士论文研究，如美国的许多初选和地方无党派选举，以及其他国家的全国选举。当只有两名候选人竞争公职时，美国传统的单一成员区和多数投票制度已被证明足以确保选举结果与选民的问题信念之间的良好契合。然而，在多候选人选举理论中，多数投票的单一成员区可能会产生不稳定的均衡。流行的理论还认为，采用单一成员地区的多数决定规则或使用多成员地区的多数决定规则将解决这一问题。为了验证这些理论预测，本项目研究了智利的投票模式，智利是少数几个同时使用两名候选人和多名候选人选举的政治制度之一，因此提供了一个受控的环境，以隔离不同选举制度的影响。关于智利选举的异常丰富的数据集已经汇编并提供给首席调查员，以促进这项研究。当完成这项研究将增强我们对选民决策的理解，选民和候选人之间的关系，以及对这些决定和替代选举制度的关系的影响。这样做，这项研究将提供重要的信息，有助于评价美国和其他地方选举制度的有效性。

The standard view of the rational voter is one who votes for the party or candidate whose positions are closest to the voter's on those ideological or issue dimensions of importance to the voter. In recent years, a highly sophisticated body of research has explored the ideological structure or "issue space" of voters, candidates, and political parties and the linkages among them. An important outcome of this research is a body of theory suggesting that the success of elections in selecting candidates who are closest to the voters' ideal is heavily influenced by the type of electoral system used. To date, however, most research on spatial theory has concentrated on American style, plurality elections involving only two candidates. This award supports doctoral dissertation research designed to test the validity of spatial theories of voting in multicandidate elections such as many primary and local non-partisan elections in the United States, and the national elections in other countries. When only two candidates compete for office the traditional American system of single member districts and plurality voting has been shown to be sufficient to insure a good fit between election outcomes and voter issue beliefs. However, in multicandidate elections theory suggests that single member districts with plurality voting are likely to produce unstable equilibrium. Prevailing theory also suggests that adoption of majority rules with single member districts or the use of multimember districts with plurality rules will solve this problem. To test these theoretical predictions this project examines voting patterns in Chile, one of the few political systems which uses both two candidate and multicandidate elections concurrently and thus provides an controlled environment in which to isolate the effects of the different electoral systems. An unusually rich data set on Chilean elections already has been assembled and made available to the Principal Investigator to facilitate this research. When completed this research will enhance our understanding of voter decisions, the relationships between voters and candidates, and the effect on those decision and relationships of alternative electoral systems. In so doing this research will provide important information that will facilitate evaluations of the effectiveness of electoral systems in the United States and elsewhere.