Estimating the Impact of Districting on Representation

估计选区对代表性的影响

• 批准号: 9905774
• 负责人: Sharyn O'Halloran
• 金额: $ 11.69万
• 依托单位: Columbia University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1999
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1999-09-01 至 2002-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9905774&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Estimating; Impact; Districting; Representation

Political institutions play a key role in mediating the aggregation of individual preferences into public policy. It is for exactly this reason that political actors pay close attention to the design of institutions, such as electoral systems and voting rules with legislatures. Yet the impact of certain types of institutions on outcomes is still poorly understood, including the relation between the distribution of voters' preferences across districts and the actions taken by their representative. This research examines in detail one particular institution - - the creation of majority-minority voting districts - - to determine the influence of these districts, not only on who gets elected to office, given different demographic characteristics within the constituency, but also on the final policy outcomes produced by the legislature.In this respect, majority-minority voting districts offer scholars of institutional analysis both an opportunity and a paradox. The opportunity is that of a natural experiment: the large number of majority-minority districts created since the 1970s allows one to investigate the impact of different districting strategies on representation. The paradox is that even as more and more of these districts have been carved out of the political landscape, a shift towards minority-preferred policy outcomes has not been apparent. Indeed, with the Republican takeover of Congress following the 1994 midterm elections, policy gains for minorities at the national level have been few and far between.This combination of evens points in the direction of both theory building and empirical analysis. Theoretically, when should we expect the creation of majority-minority districts to be translated into real policy progress, and when will these districts over-concentrate minority voters to the detriment of overall representation? Empirically, how are preferences now distributed both in the U.S. as a whole and within different regions in particular, and what does this imply for alternative districting strategies? Answers to these questions enable a better understanding of the role that institutions play in aggregating preferences in a diverse republic.The product of this research includes dissemination of the roll call and electoral data to the broader research community through an interactive web-based archive.

政治制度在将个人偏好整合到公共政策中发挥着关键作用。 正是由于这个原因，政治行为者密切关注制度的设计，例如选举制度和立法机关的投票规则。 然而，某些类型的制度对结果的影响仍然知之甚少，包括跨地区选民偏好的分布与其代表所采取的行动之间的关系。 这项研究详细考察了一个特定的制度——多数少数投票选区的设立——以确定这些选区的影响力，不仅对选区内不同人口特征下谁当选公职的影响，而且还对立法机关产生的最终政策结果产生影响。在这方面，多数少数投票选区为制度分析学者提供了机会和悖论。 机会在于一场自然实验：自 20 世纪 70 年代以来创建的大量少数族裔选区使人们能够调查不同选区策略对代表性的影响。 矛盾的是，尽管越来越多的地区被排除在政治版图之外，但向少数族裔偏好的政策结果的转变却并不明显。 事实上，随着 1994 年中期选举后共和党接管国会，少数族裔在国家层面上取得的政策成果却少之又少。这种事件的结合既指明了理论构建，也指明了实证分析的方向。 从理论上讲，我们什么时候应该期望少数族裔占多数的选区的创建能够转化为真正的政策进展，以及这些选区何时会过度集中少数族裔选民而损害总体代表性？ 从经验上看，现在美国整体以及特别是不同地区的偏好是如何分布的，这对替代选区策略意味着什么？ 这些问题的答案使我们能够更好地理解机构在汇总不同共和国的偏好方面所发挥的作用。这项研究的成果包括通过交互式网络档案向更广泛的研究界传播点名和选举数据。