Dissertation Research: Heightened Competitiveness in a Party System Matter? Its Effect on Candidate Quality and Deputy Behavior in Democratizing Mexico

本论文项目确定了墨西哥政党制度中竞争力的提高对候选人素质和副手行为的影响（如果有的话）。据推测，随着政党制度从一党主导向两党或多党主导转变，候选人的质量也相应提高，立法机构中代表的行为相对于行政和/或以前的主导政党也会发生变化。“竞争力”是在相对多数选区的水平上，根据各政党候选人从一次选举到下一次选举的得票数来衡量。候选人的“素质”是根据候选人在竞选立法机构席位之前的政治经验的程度和性质来衡量的。代表行为的变化是指对选民服务数量的变化和对行政部门发起的主要立法提出的实质性修正案的数量的变化。政党制度中不同程度的竞争如何影响候选人的素质和代表的行为是一个重要的问题，因为它对相对于行政部门和以前占主导地位的政党的立法自治有直接影响。换句话说，政党制度的竞争力对于使立法机构更充分地参与决策过程，从而影响民主或民主化进程的性质是否重要？为了回答这些问题，我们对政党领导人和公职人员进行了访谈，以获得有关在选择候选人时优先考虑政治经验的程度以及选民案例工作的重要性的信息。通过确定在每个地区一级的竞选活动上花费了多少钱，以及通过确定代表们在一届会议上对行政部门发起的立法提出的与选民有关的修正案的数量，这些访谈补充并有助于更好地解释墨西哥众议院和联邦选举研究所（IFE）图书馆中的档案研究。从访谈和档案研究中获得的数据进行编码和比较，以确定两次选举之间的差异是否与每个政党在地区一级的投票总数的差异相关。

This dissertation project determines what effects, if any, heightened competitiveness in a party system have on candidate quality and deputy behavior in Mexico. It is hypothesized that, as party systems transform from being one-party dominant to being two-party or multi-party, there is a corresponding improvement in the quality of candidates and a change in deputy behavior in the legislature vis-a-vis the executive and/or the formerly dominant party. "Competitiveness" is measured at the level of relative majority districts in terms of the number of votes received by each party's candidate from one election to the next. Candidate "quality" is measured by both the degree and nature of a candidate's political experience prior to running for a seat in the legislature. Changes in deputy behavior are operationalized as being both a change in the amount of constituency service and in the number of substantive amendments filed to major executive-sponsored legislation. How the varying degrees of competiitiveness in the party system affect both candidate quality and deputy behavior is an important question since it has direct implications for legislative autonomy vis-a-vis the executive and the formerly dominant party. In other words, does party system competitiveness matter for enabling the legislature to participate more fully in the policymaking process, and thereby affect the nature of democracy or the process of democratization? To answer these questions, party leaders and officeholders are interviewed to obtain information on the degree of importance placed on prior political experience in selecting candidates and on the importance of constituent casework. These interviews supplement and allow for better interpretation of archival research in the library of the Mexican Chamber of Deputies and the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) by determining how much money was spent on each district-level campaign, and by ascertaining the number of constituent-related amendments filed by deputies to executive-sponsored legislation in one session as compared to the previous session. Data obtained from both the interviews and the archival research are coded and compared to determine whether differences between the two elections are correlated with differences in district-level vote totals for each party.