Collaborative Research - The Quality of Elected Public Officials: Causes and Consequences

这项计划拨款将使两名年轻的研究人员能够完成对代议制民主国家政治领导质量的原因和后果的理论研究，并制定一项实证研究计划来测试理论。重点是质量的两个方面：能力和诚实。 一个模型的开发，捕捉一个严格的理论的平均质量（在能力，诚实，或两者兼而有之）的公职人员的决定因素。 该模型强调了竞选公职的动机是政治精英素质的关键决定因素。 当这种激励是内生的时，最有趣的结果出现了。具体地说，如果任职的收益在任职者的平均质量上增加，那么在任职者的质量上可以存在多重均衡。在"高"均衡中，许多官员都是高素质的，高素质的公民参加竞选是值得的，而在"低"均衡中，许多官员都是低素质的，高素质的公民不被鼓励参加竞选。 调查人员还更密切地关注机构--特别是选举制度和党组织--在决定公职人员平均素质方面所发挥的作用。在该模型中，公民候选人不仅在质量方面，而且在意识形态立场（在一维政策空间上）和政策偏好与质量偏好的强度方面彼此不同。每个意识形态立场都有一个政党，政党领导人在每个地区选择候选人。该模型允许调查人员考虑各种选举制度，并包括对如果没有政党获得绝对多数席位时议会中发生的事后联盟组建游戏的描述。这个丰富框架的一个初步结果是，如果大多数选民具有高强度的政策偏好，（不太关心质量），那么多数原则总是会激励政党领导人选择高质量的候选人，而在比例代表制下，存在着公职人员平均素质较低的均衡。该项目还开始了一个大规模的-大规模数据收集工作，旨在记录各国政治领导人平均素质的差异。虽然已经有关于腐败的跨国数据，但迄今为止还没有关于官员技能的可比数据：本项目旨在填补这一空白。 该项目将开始按国家收集关于当选官员的教育、以前的职业、以前的收入和社会地位的资料。 这些代表官员能力的指标可用于测试和/或告知官员素质决定因素的理论，以及调查其后果。

This planning grant will enable two young investigators to complete theoretical studies on the causes and consequences of the quality of the political leadership in representative democracies and develop a program of empirical research to test the theory. The focus is on two dimensions of quality: competence and honesty. A model is developed that captures a rigorous theory of the determinants of the average quality (in terms of competence, honesty, or both) of office holders. The model spotlights incentives to run for office as the key determinant of the quality of the political elite. The most interesting results emerge when such incentives are endogenous. Specifically, if the returns from holding office are increasing in the average quality of office holders, there can be multiple equilibria in office-holders' quality. There are "high" equilibria in which, many office holders being of high quality, it pays for high--quality citizens to run, and "low" equilibria in which, many office holders being of low-quality, high-quality citizens are discouraged from running. The investigators also look more closely at the role that institutions - and especially electoral systems and party organizations - play in determining the average quality of office holders. In the model, the citizen-candidates differ from one another not only in terms of quality but also in terms of ideological position (on a uni-dimensional policy space) and intensity of policy preferences vs. quality preferences. There is a party for each ideological position and the party leaders choose the candidates in each district. The model allows the investigators to consider a variety of electoral systems and includes a description of the ex post coalition formation game taking place in the Parliament if no party achieves the absolute majority. A preliminary result in this rich framework is that if most voters have a high intensity of policy preferences (caring less about quality), then plurality rule always creates incentives for party leaders to select high--quality candidates, whereas under proportional representation there exist equilibria with low average quality of office holders.The project also begins a large-scale data collection effort aimed at documenting variation across countries in the average quality of the political leadership. While cross-country data on corruption already exist, comparable data on office holders' skills have not been heretofore available: this project aims to fill this gap. The project will start collecting information by country on elected officials' education, previous profession, previous income and social status. These proxies for office holders' ability can be used to test and/or inform theories of the determinants of office holders' quality, as well as to investigate its consequences.