A Nation of States: Mapping the Impact of National Political Forces Through State Electoral Institutions, 1840-1940

拟议的项目将侧重于研究政党制度，重点是一个制度中的政党数量和区域政党的可持续性。 调查员计划建立在以前的理论和实证结果，以了解在各种国家的政党制度。 目前，他有加拿大和英国的数据，并将获得俄罗斯，德国，韩国，博茨瓦纳，加纳和津巴布韦的数据，可能还有更多的国家。促使进行这项研究的根本问题是，一些政党如何以及为什么成为全国性政党并保持全国性存在，以及一些政党如何以及为什么只有区域性吸引力。这项研究的结果应该广泛适用于许多其他民主国家的政党制度。该项目的核心是Chhibber和Kollman（1998 A，1998 B）首次提出的理论论点，即政府中央集权的程度是解释一个系统中政党数量和地区或地方政党生存的重要因素。关于政党制度的文献数量庞大，种类繁多。然而，大多数政党制度理论都是静态的。根据选举机构、民族文化、国家人口的异质性或总统制来确定政党的数量，在捕捉跨国差异方面相当成功。然而，这些解释并不能帮助我们理解政党制度的动态。由于在许多制度中当事方的数目是波动的，解释这种模式需要注意随时间变化的变量。在美国和印度，与政党政治密切相关的一个变量是中央政府权力的集中化。该项目将包括经验和理论两个组成部分。 在经验方面，收集的数据集将包含各国选区一级的选举结果。 目前，调查人员拥有来自加拿大和英国的数据，这两个国家的下议院采用单一成员、简单多数选举制度，类似于印度和美国。其他单一成员简单多数国家、韩国、博茨瓦纳、加纳和津巴布韦有可用数据，研究者也将收集这些数据。 调查员还将从实行混合选举制度（比例代表制和多数制）的国家收集数据，首先是德国和俄罗斯。正式部分包含严格的理论模型，可以深入了解政党组建和跨选区政党聚集的过程。在此基础上，研究者将扩展杜佛杰定律的理性选择模型，以纳入国家政治。然后，利用这些见解，研究者将探讨在类似的环境中的多维政治竞争，但包括联邦政府和立法政党的多个级别。

The proposed project will focus on the study of political party systems, with an emphasis on the number of parties in a system, and on the sustainability of regional parties. The Investigator plans to build on previous theoretical and empirical results to understand party systems in a variety of countries. Currently he has data on Canada and Great Britain, and will get access to data on Russia, Germany, South Korea, Botswana, Ghana, and Zimbabwe, and possibly more countries. The fundamental question motivating the study is how and why some parties become national in scope and sustain a nationwide presence, and how and why some parties have only regional appeal. Results from this research should be widely applicable to party systems in many other democracies. At the core of the project is the theoretical argument, first proposed in Chhibber and Kollman (1998A, 1998B), that the degree of government centralization is an important factor in explaining both the number of parties in a system and the survival of regional or local parties. The literature on party systems is vast and diverse. Yet most theories of party systems are static. Explanations of the number of parties based on electoral institutions, national culture, the heterogeneity of national populations, or presidentialism have been quite successful at capturing cross-national differences. However, these explanations cannot help us to understand the dynamics of party systems. As the number of parties in many systems fluctuates, explaining the patterns requires attention on variables that change over time. One such variable that has been strongly correlated with party politics in the United States and India is the centralization of national government authority. The project will entail both empirical and theoretical components. On the empirical side, the data sets gathered will contain constituency-level election results for a variety of countries. Currently, the Investigator has data from Canada and Great Britain, two countries with single member, simple plurality electoral systems to their lower houses, similar to those in India and the United States. Other single member simple plurality countries, South Korea, Botswana, Ghana, and Zimbabwe have available data, and the Investigator will gather these data as well. The Investigator will also gather data from countries that have mixed electoral systems (elements of proportional representation and plurality), beginning with Germany and Russia. The formal component contains a rigorous theoretical models that can offer insights into the process of party formation and party aggregation across electoral districts. As a base, the Investigator will extend rational choice models of Duverger's Law to incorporate national politics. Then using these insights, the Investigator will explore multidimensional political competition in a similar environment, but including multiple levels of government as in a federation, and legislative parties.