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

选区的形状和位置的变化会影响公民在政治过程中的参与吗？选区是否可以被操纵以影响公民的政治态度和行为？尽管这些问题是当前关于国会选区重新划分的争论的核心，但对地区特征和公民之间的联系却很少有系统的研究。本文通过(1)收集20世纪80年代和90年代的选区特征与公民态度和行为的数据，以及(2)使用多层次分析技术调查不同选区创造的背景如何影响地区居民的政治态度和行为来分析这种联系。本研究的主要目的是解决一个基本而重要的问题：选区如何按地理位置划分，以鼓励或阻碍公民的政治参与？具体来说，它发展并测试了一个理论，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。通过收集美国现有地区的地区特征数据（如紧凑性得分和地区符合县和市边界的程度），并将这些信息与公民态度和参与措施相结合，本文能够确定公民态度的变化与地区差异之间的关系。这为关于适用于选区划分的标准的辩论提供了急需的资料。更一般地说，它还提供了关于上下文变量如何有助于理解个人层面行为的见解。

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.