Policy Representation in the American States II

这个更新项目继续致力于开发新的数据和研究表征的新方法。它将各州立法机构和美国国会作为101个代议制，通过这些代议制，我们可以研究选区、政党和唱名投票之间的联系。这种比较视角比以往的工作提供了实质性的优势，因为它使研究设计超越了单一机构案例研究的局限性，并提供了制度规则和程序、选举环境和选民偏好的足够变化，从而更深入地了解了增强或阻碍政府对公民偏好做出反应的因素。过去，这种方法的最大障碍就是缺乏数据。点名记录被用来衡量立法者在立法机构中的政策立场，但是，除了美国国会之外，这些记录没有以任何容易获得的格式进行科学分析。本项目已解决了这一缺点，开发了一种计算机辅助从各州的各种来源和格式中提取点名数据的方法。与手工编码和手工数据输入的传统方法相比，这种数据生成方法显着提高了效率，并且不易出错。在最初的赠款期间，该方法已经得到了很好的发展，1999-2000年会议期间，几乎已经编制了一套完整的唱名和立法区的总统投票总数。初步分析指出，政党在选民和立法机构中对政策代表和选举责任具有核心重要性，研究人员发现，政党在选举和立法机构中都扮演着各种各样的角色。本项目在四个方面继续开展这项工作。首先，对已完成的数据集进行分析，可以核实和扩展关于政党和选区在立法者唱名投票中的作用的初步调查结果。其次，已汇编的大约5万张唱名表决被编码，以便按政策领域或法案类型进行分析。第三，在数据收集中增加了立法选举结果和立法者社会政治背景的信息，大大增加了唱名和选区信息的分析杠杆作用。第四，对数据收集进行纵向分析，以便分析代表性和立法政策制定方面的变化和稳定性。其中一个方面是复制1999-2000年的数据汇编，包括101个立法院在重新分配后的完整唱名记录。这大大增加了调查人员建立立法联盟的时间稳定性和立法者随着时间的推移的意识形态定位的能力，以及评估重新划分选区和任期限制等机构变化的能力。第二个方面是收集大约一半的立法院的完整时间序列的点名，这些点名可以在网上访问。这可以通过建立在初始资助期发展起来的专业知识来实现，因此，对于相对适度的投资，该项目将为研究界提供大量的数据资源，用于美国立法政策制定的比较研究。除了极大地扩展了美国立法机构代表性和政策制定研究的数据资源，该项目还有助于我们理解政治背景，制度配置和多样性影响选举和政党作为公民控制政府的机制的有效性。

This renewal project continues work on developing new data and a new approach to the study of representation. It uses the legislatures of the states and the US Congress as 101 representative systems through which we can study the linkages between constituency, party and roll call voting. This comparative perspective provides substantial advantages over previous work by taking the research designs beyond the limitations of a case study of a single institution and by providing enough variation in institutional rules and procedures, electoral settings and constituency preferences to achieve deeper understanding of the factors that enhance or retard governmental responsiveness to citizen preferences. The greatest obstacle to this approach in the past has been a simple lack of data. Roll call records are used to gauge legislators' policy positions within the legislatures, but, except for the U.S. Congress, these are not compiled in any easily available format for scientific analyses. This project has addressed that shortcoming with the development of a methodology of computer-assisted extraction of roll call data from the variety of sources and formats in which this information is found in the states. This approach to data generation is dramatically more efficient and less error-prone than traditional methods of hand coding and manual data entry. The methodology has been well-developed during the initial grant period and virtually a full set of roll calls and matching presidential vote totals for legislative districts have been compiled for the 1999-2000 sessions. Initial analyses point to the central importance of parties in the electorate and in the legislatures for policy representation and electoral accountability, and the researchers have found that parties take on a variety of roles, both in elections and in the legislatures. This project continues that work on four fronts. First, analysis of the completed data sets permits verification and expansion on the initial findings concerning the role of party and constituency in legislators' roll call voting. Second, the approximately fifty thousand roll call votes that have been compiled are coded to facilitate analyses by policy area or types of bills. Third, information on legislative electoral returns and the socio-political backgrounds of legislators is added to the data collection to increase substantially the analytic leverage of the roll call and constituency information. Fourth, a longitudinal component to the data collection is undertaken to permit analyses of change and stability in representation and legislative policy making. One aspect of this is the replication of the 1999-2000 data compilation with a full post-reapportionment roll call record of the 101 legislative chambers. This adds significantly to the investigators' ability to establish the temporal stability of legislative coalitions and the ideological positioning of legislators over time as well as to assess institutional changes like redistricting and term limits. The second aspect of this is the collection of the full time series of roll calls for the approximately half of the legislative chambers for which roll calls are web-accessible. This is possible by building on the expertise developed in the initial grant period, so that for a relatively modest investment, the project will produce for the research community a quantum increase in the data resources for comparative study of legislative policy making in the U.S. Besides greatly expanding the data resources for research on representation and policy making in the American legislatures, the project contributes to our understanding of how political contexts, institutional configurations and diversity influence the effectiveness of elections and political parties as mechanisms of citizen control of government.