Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Elect oral District Structure and Political Behavior

选区形状和位置的变化是否会影响公民参与政治进程？地区能否被操纵，以影响公民的政治态度和行为？虽然这些问题是当前关于国会重新划分选区的辩论的核心问题，但几乎没有系统地研究过选区特征和公民之间的联系。本文通过(1)收集20世纪80年代和90年代的选区特征和公民态度与行为的数据，以及(2)使用多层次分析技术来研究不同选区创造的背景如何影响选区居民的政治态度和行为，来分析这种联系。这项研究的主要目标是解决一个基本而重要的问题：如何在地理上构建选区，以鼓励或阻止公民的政治参与和参与？具体地说，它开发和测试了一种理论，通过一个地区对环境中信息交换的便利性的影响，将地区的地理特征与公民行为联系起来。通过从美国现有的一系列地区收集有关地区特征的数据(如紧凑度分数和地区与县市边界的一致性程度)，并将这些信息与公民态度和参与措施相结合，本论文能够确定公民态度的差异如何与地区差异有关。这为关于划分选区的标准的辩论提供了急需的信息。更广泛地说，它还提供了对上下文变量如何有助于理解个人级别行为的洞察。

Do variations in the shape and location of electoral districts affect citizen engagement in the political process? Can districts be manipulated in ways that impact the political attitudes and behaviors of citizens? Although these questions are central to current debates over congressional redistricting, there has been little systematic examination of the link between district characteristics and citizens. This dissertation analyzes this linkage by (1) collecting data on electoral district characteristics and citizen attitudes and behavior in the 1980s and 1990s, and (2) using multi-level analytical techniques to investigate how the context created by various electoral districts impacts the political attitudes and behaviors of district residents. The primary objective of this researc is to address a basic and important question: How can electoral districts be structured geographically to encourage or discourage political engagement and participation on the part of citizens? Specifically, it develops and tests a theory linking geographic characteristics of districts to citizen behavior via the effects that a district can have on the ease of information exchange in the environment. By gathering data on district characteristics (such as compactness scores and the degree to which districts conform to county and city boundaries) from the range of districts in place in the United States, and merging this information with citizen attitude and participation measures, this dissertation is able to determine how variation in citizen attitudes relates to district differences. This provides much-needed information to the debate over the standards applied to the drawing of electoral districts. More generally, it also provides insight into how contextual variables can contribute to an understanding of individual-level behavior.