Democracy, Toleration, and the Strains of French Politics

公民在压力下对民主实践的承诺是我们提出的这项研究的独特目标。一系列著名的研究为公民对一系列民主价值观的支持提供了基准观点(Stouffer，1955；McClosky，1964；McClosky and Brill，1983；Gibson，1988；Sullivan等人，1978,1982)。尽管民主价值观的覆盖面很广，但对承诺这些价值观的条件的审查仍然很狭窄。对政治问题态度的评估通常是在刻意保持中立的条件下进行的。问题的措辞，备选方案的框架，甚至采访者的举止都是为了消除(或至少平衡)受访者在公共问题上选择一方而不是另一方的压力(有关开创性的例外，见Marcus等人，1995；Gibson，1998)。这些研究是有价值的，但如果要理解处于压力下的民主国家的政治，就有必要考察公民在压力下的承诺。当他们在人为中立的情况下权衡自己的选择时，而不是当他们必须在压力下做出选择时，他们有多大意愿履行对民主价值观的承诺？当他们面对相互竞争的价值观时，他们准备好接受甚至放弃他们吗？哪种压力--信息、规范、社会或意识形态--对公民对民主价值观的承诺施加了最大的压力？为了谁？为什么？对民主政治的实践又会产生什么后果？我们提出的这项研究旨在为理解法国或其他地方的公民在相互竞争的价值观的压力下或面对对权威的呼吁--包括民意的权威--时支持或放弃民主原则开辟新的天地。为了实现这一目标，我们与巴黎的政治生活中心(CEVIPOF)和里昂的政治研究所(CERIP)建立了伙伴关系。每一种方法都有独特的方法专长。CEVIPOF小组在过去20年中一直是法国选举政治研究的领先调查研究团队(Boy and Mayer，1993；Boy and Mayer，1997；Mayer，1997)。CERIP小组一直是通过密切观察和密集采访研究普通公民政治的主要论坛。我们小组专注于通过计算机辅助采访，将随机实验的推理强度与代表性样本的描述强度结合起来。共同努力，我们可以进行一项单靠我们谁也无法完成的研究。

The commitment of citizens to democratic practices under pressure is the distinctive objective of the study that we propose. A celebrated series of studies has provided a benchmark view of citizens' support for an array of democratic values (Stouffer, 1955; McClosky, 1964; McClosky and Brill, 1983; Gibson, 1988; Sullivan et al., 1978, 1982). Although the coverage of democratic values is wide, the examination of the conditions of commitment to them remains narrow. The assessment of attitudes toward political issues typically is carried out in conditions that deliberately are studiously neutral. The wording of questions, the framing of alternatives, and even the demeanor of the interviewers are designed to eliminate (or at least to balance) the pressure on respondents to take one, rather than another, side of a public issue (for pioneering exceptions, see Marcus et al., 1995; Gibson, 1998). These studies are valuable but, if the politics of democracies under strain is to be grasped, it is necessary to examine the commitments of citizens under pressure. How willing are they to honor their commitments to democratic values, not when they weigh their choices in an an artificially neutral situation, but when they must make them under pressure? How ready are they to qualify, or even abandon, them when they come face-to-face with competing values? What kinds of pressure - informational, normative, social or ideological, impose the greatest strain on the commitment of citizens to democratic values? For whom? And why? And with what consequences for the practice of democratic politics? The study that we propose is designed to break new ground in understanding when citizens, in France or elsewhere, stand by or forsake democratic principles under the pressure of competing values or in the face of an appeal to authority - including the authority of the popular will. To make this possible, we have partnerships with the Centre d'Etude de la Vie Politique Francaise (CEVIPOF) in Paris and the Institute d'Etude Politiques (CERIP) in Lyon. Each has a distinctive methodological expertise. The CEVIPOF group has been the leading survey research team in the study of electoral politics in France over the last two decades (Boy and Mayer, 1993; Boy and Mayer, 1997; Mayer, 1997). The CERIP group has been the principal forum for the study of the politics of ordinary citizens through close observation and intensive interviewing. Our group concentrates on marrying, through computer-assisted interviewing, the inferential strength of the randomized experiment with the descriptive strength of the representative sample. Working together, we can carry out a study that none of could accomplish on our own.