Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Extension of Suffrage as Policy Innovation: A Comparative Study of the American States

这篇博士论文解释了选举权在联邦制中的延伸。最终的问题是：一个以前被排除在外的群体需要做些什么才能成功地为选举包容性进行游说？虽然其他学者将选举权的群众激进主义的行为解释和政策制定的制度解释视为两个独立的努力，但首席调查员认为，两者高度关联，无法独立理解。要了解政治融合运动何时以及如何取得成功，需要了解激进主义进程和体制制约如何相互作用。该项目将明确努力将寻求解释激进主义发展和维持的社会运动文献中的理论框架与寻求解释政策制定过程(例如，政党、立法机构和政策创新)的政治学文献相结合，以提供对选举权过程的新的、更完整的解释。为了回答这个关于美国政治制度的基本问题，首席调查员研究了争取通过妇女选举权的斗争。妇女选举权措施是各州通过立法、制宪会议和全民公决审议和通过的。其中一些措施只规定了总统选举权，有些只规定了初选，有些规定了全面选举权。在最早和最晚的国家级妇女选举权领养者之间，已经过去了30年。正是通过对这种差异的调查，我们才能发现体制和社会政治因素使以前被排除在外的群体或多或少有可能扩大选举参与权。研究设计结合了事件历史方法来分析所有48个州的情况，并对妇女选举权的考虑进行了深入的档案研究(在6个州的样本中)。国家数据分析将各州通过妇女选举权的时间建模为社会和体制条件的函数，包括：党派竞争、第三方的选举实力、人口的种族和性别构成、经济条件、妇女选举权利益的组织以及国家倡议和宪法修订进程的困难。档案工作是在明确选择的州进行的，因为它们在这些条件上存在差异。这使得首席调查员能够追踪这些因素中的每一个因素在被剥夺公民权的群体争取其政治包容性的斗争中发挥作用的过程。

This Doctoral Dissertation provides an explanation of the extension of suffrage rights in a federal system. The ultimate question is: what does it take for a previously excluded group to successfully lobby for the right of electoral inclusion? While other scholars have treated the behavioral explanation of mass activism for suffrage rights and the institutional explanation of policy enactment as separate endeavors, the Principal Investigator argues that the two are too highly interconnected to be understood independently. Understanding when and how movements for political incorporation succeed requires understanding how the processes of activism and institutional constraints interact. The project will explicitly endeavor to combine theoretical frameworks from the literature on social movements that seek to explain the development and maintenance of activism, with the literatures in political science that seek to explain processes of policy enactment (e.g., political parties, legislative institutions, and policy innovation) to offer a new and more complete explanation of the process of enfranchisement. To answer this fundamental question about the American political system, the Principal Investigator studies the struggle for adoption of woman suffrage. Woman suffrage measures were considered and adopted by states through legislative enactment, constitutional convention, and popular referendum. Some of these measures provided for only presidential suffrage, some only primary suffrage, some full suffrage. Thirty years passed between the earliest and latest state-level adopters of woman suffrage. It is through investigation of this variance that we can discover the institutional and socio-political factors that make expansion of the right of electoral participation more or less possible for previously excluded groups. The research design combines an event history approach to analysis of in all forty-eight states with in-depth archival research on the consideration of woman suffrage (in a sample of six states). The national data analysis models the time to adoption of woman suffrage in the states as a function of social and institutional conditions, including: partisan competition, electoral strength of third parties, racial and sex composition of the population, economic conditions, organization of woman suffrage interests, and the difficulty of the state initiative and constitutional amendment processes. The archival work is conducted in states chosen explicitly for their variance on these conditions. This allows the Principal Investigator the ability to trace the processes through which each of these factors comes to matter in the struggle by disenfranchised groups for their political inclusion.