Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Voting Behavior in the Context of U.S. Federalism

这篇博士论文《研究支持调查》考察了美国政治机构的联邦结构如何影响个人将政策意见转化为投票行为的方式。一个理论框架特别关注公民对联邦系统中不同级别政府的决策和政策执行作出不同责任分配的能力。具体的假设集中在这种责任归因对政策意见和联邦投票行为之间的联系的影响。通过收集公民对不同政策领域的态度以及他们认为对这些政策负有责任的政府级别的原始调查数据，将分析假设的关系。这篇论文对理解美国联邦投票的经验模式具有启示意义，此前对这些模式的研究还不够深入。该模型对那些更有可能在不同级别的政府中投票给不同政党的人，以及那些投票给较低职位但不是较高职位的人进行了具体的预测。

This Doctoral Dissertation Research Support investigation examines how the federal structure of American political institutions affects the way in which individuals translate policy opinions into voting behavior. A theoretical framework pays particular attention to citizens' ability to make different attributions of responsibility for policymaking and policy performance across different levels of government in a federal system. Specific hypotheses focus on the affect such responsibility attributions have on the linkage between policy opinions and federal voting behavior. The hypothesized relationships will be analyzed by collecting original survey data on citizen attitudes about various policy areas and the level of governments they deem responsible for those policies.This dissertation has implications for understanding empirical patterns of American federal voting that heretofore have been understudied. The model produces specific predictions regarding those who would be more likely to vote for different parties at different levels of government and for those who turnout for lower offices, but not higher ones.