National Party Systems and National and Regional Parties

拟议的项目将侧重于政党制度的研究，重点是一个制度中政党的数量，以及区域政党的可持续性。《调查者》计划以之前的理论和经验结果为基础，了解不同国家的政党制度。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，可能还有更多国家的数据。推动这项研究的根本问题是，一些政党如何和为什么在全国范围内成为全国性的存在，以及一些政党如何和为什么只具有地区性吸引力。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。该项目的核心是由Chhibber和Kollman(1998A，1998B)首次提出的理论论证，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浩如烟海，五花八门。然而，大多数关于政党制度的理论都是静态的。根据选举机构、国家文化、国家人口的异质性或总统制对政党数量的解释在捕捉跨国差异方面取得了相当成功的结果。然而，这些解释并不能帮助我们理解政党制度的动态。由于许多系统中的参与方数量在波动，解释这些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这样的变量是国家政府权力的中央集权。该项目将包括经验和理论两个部分。在经验方面，收集的数据集将包含不同国家的选区选举结果。目前，《调查者》的数据来自加拿大和英国，这两个国家的下议院实行单一成员、简单多数的选举制度，类似于印度和美国的数据。其他单一成员简单多数国家、韩国、博茨瓦纳、加纳和津巴布韦都有可用的数据，调查员也将收集这些数据。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，从德国和俄罗斯开始。正式组成部分包含一个严格的理论模型，可提供对跨选区的政党组建和政党聚集过程的见解。作为基础，调查者将扩展杜弗格定律的理性选择模型，以纳入国家政治。然后利用这些洞察力，调查者将在类似的环境中探索多维政治竞争，但包括联邦中的多层政府和立法政党。

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.