Policy Representation in the American States

代表权是民主进程的核心。尽管民主有很多定义，但几乎所有的定义都包括州长需要对被统治者的意愿做出一定程度的回应。这个项目寻求将代表权的研究扩展到美国各州。它遵循了文学中的传统，即根据公民的政策偏好与代表他们的立法者之间的一致性来审查代表权。该项目的创新之处在于：(1)将代表制理论扩展到美国各州的比较制度和选举环境中；(2)开发了有关立法、政策、行为和选民偏好的新数据资源。大多数关于代表权的经验性工作集中在美国众议院，因此，选举和体制条件没有变化，这意味着几乎没有关于加强或阻碍有效代表权的条件的理论发展。造成这种情况的主要原因是，除了国会之外，缺乏其他背景下的数据，无法从经验上解决代表性问题。这项研究包括美国所有的州立法机构。比较分析考察了各州不同的选举、宪法和地区特征如何影响政策代表的过程。该项目还审查并试图解释州立法机构之间党派冲突强度的差异，主要借鉴了最近关于政党与国会影响的文献。该项目的一个主要部分是为分析各州的代表性收集数据。最大的任务是收集50个州的一套全面的唱名投票。有两项技术进步使这项工作成为可能：大多数国家期刊--点名数据的来源--不能通过互联网获得，文本处理技术允许将立法期刊的文本转换为点名数据集。所涉期间为1999-2000年期间(适当时对奇数年选举的州加以更改)。这些数据还包括利益集团对州议员的全面评级，以及对州立法机构候选人的调查。这些调查是对唱名表的验证，并为以唱名为基础的措施建立了一个共同的衡量标准，从而提高了这些衡量标准在各议院和各州的比较分析中的价值。在选民方面，该项目广泛收集了州立法选区可用的人口统计特征。该项目还处理新获得的总统投票措施，作为选民偏好的指标。该项目有望在我们理解各州之间的选举和体制差异如何塑造公民实现有效政策代表的能力方面取得重要进展。它还产生了重要的新数据，供州、选举和立法政治团体使用。这种方法和吸取的经验教训对研究代表权的影响远远超出了美国各州的范围。

Representation lies at the very heart of democratic processes. Although there are many definitions of democracy, almost all include the need for some level of responsiveness of governors to the will of the governed. This project seeks to extend studies of representation to the American states. It follows the tradition in the literature of examining representation in terms of the congruence between the policy preferences of citizens and the legislators who represent them. The innovations of this project are (1) the extension of theories of representation into the comparative institutional and electoral contexts of the American states; (2) the development of new data resources on legislative policy behavior and constituency preferences. Most of the empirical work on representation focuses on the United States House of Representatives and, consequently, the lack of variation in electoral and institutional conditions means that there is little theoretical development of the conditions which enhance or retard effective representation. The major reason for this is the paucity of data in contexts other than the Congress to address empirically questions of representation. This study includes all state legislatures of the United States. The comparative analysis examines how the varying electoral, constitutional and district features of the states influence the process of policy representation. The project also examines and attempts to account for variations in the intensity of partisan conflict among state legislatures, drawing substantially from the recent literature on the impact of party with the Congress. A major part of this project is the collection of data for the analysis of representation in the states. The biggest task is the collection of a comprehensive set of roll call votes in the 50 states. Two technological advances makes this effort possible: most state journals, the source of roll call data, are not available over the Internet and text-processing technology allows the conversion of the text of legislative journals into roll call data sets. The period covered is the 1999-2000 terms (varying them where appropriate for states with odd-year elections). These data are supplemented with a comprehensive collection of interest group ratings of state legislators, and surveys of state legislative candidates. The surveys serve as validation of the roll call scales and to establish a common metric for roll call-based measures which enhances their value in comparative analysis across chambers and states. On the voter side, the project uses an extensive collection of demographic characteristics available for the state legislative districts. The project also processes newly available presidential voting measures, which serve as an indicator of voter preferences. The project promises to make important progress in our understanding of how electoral and institutional differences among the states shape the ability of citizens to achieve effective policy representation. It also produces important new data for use by the state, electoral and legislative politics communities. The approach and the lessons learned have implications for the study of representation well beyond the context of the American states.