Doctoral Dissertation Research: Expansion of Voting Rights for Women in the United States: Institutional Openness, State-building, and Gender

本研究旨在通过考察第一次世界大战之前整个西部各州通过选举权立法的情况，并记录西方选举权的成功如何影响全国范围内的采用，从而对美国妇女选举权运动的历史产生新的理解。在这个项目中，我解决了以下问题。首先，为什么西部各州比其他立法尝试较少的州更早地通过了妇女选举权？第二，为什么东北部和中西部的州在社会运动动员和持续不断的立法活动的情况下通过妇女选举权立法要困难得多？最后，为什么大多数南方州的立法机构根本没有采纳妇女选举权？我使用的数据包括48个州所有争取妇女选举权的立法活动，并记录了1848年至1920年间选举权成功和失败的地区模式，我在美国投票权变化的背景下分析了这些模式，州政府和州立法程序的变化，州政党政治，社会运动组织，以及改变性别期望和安排以解释在国家投票权修正案批准之前各州完全投票权采用的不同结果。我将使用定量的，48个州的事件历史分析来测试独立变量对每个州完全选举权采用时间的影响。为了提供丰富的社会运动背景描述，以及影响州选举权采用时间变化的国家制度和政治过程，我将对八个单独的州案例进行定性的比较分析，以解释与定量分析不一致的模式和结果。本研究在三个领域对社会科学做出了贡献：本研究有助于理解美国的历史变化是如何发生的，以及我们如何通过使用定量分析和比较案例研究来改进我们用来解释这些变化的方法。本研究有助于理解美国州级立法变革的过程。理论思想和方法方法可以应用于其他团体和组织动员的当代国家层面的政策变化，如福利改革，同性婚姻立法和通过婚姻保护法。

This study seeks to bring a new understanding to the history of the American woman suffrage movement by examining the adoption of suffrage legislation throughout the western states prior to World War I and documenting how western suffrage successes influenced adoption nationally. In this project I address the following questions. First, why were the western states so much more successful in adopting woman suffrage at a much earlier time than other states with fewer legislative attempts? Second, why did the northeastern and Midwestern states have so much more difficulty passing woman suffrage legislation despite social movement mobilization and continuous and increasing legislative activity? And finally, why did most southern state legislatures fail to adopt woman suffrage at all? I use data that includes all legislative activity for woman suffrage in 48 states and documents regional patterns of suffrage success and failure from 1848 to 1920, and I analyze these patterns in the context of changing voting rights in the United States, variations in state governments and state legislative processes, state party politics, social movement organization, and changing gender expectations and arrangements in order to explain the variable outcomes in state full suffrage adoption prior to the ratification of the national suffrage amendment. I will use quantitative, 48-state event history analysis to test the effects of independent variables on the timing of full suffrage adoption of each state. To provide a rich contextual description of social movement as well as state institutional and political processes affecting variation of the timing of state suffrage adoption, I will conduct a qualitative, comparative analysis of eight individual state cases in order to explain patterns and outcomes that are inconsistent with the quantitative analyses. This study contributes to social science in three areas: This study contributes to understanding how historical change in the United States occurred and how we can improve the methodology we use to explain these transformations by using quantitative analysis alongside comparative case studies. This study contributes to understanding the process of state-level legislative change in the United States. The theoretical ideas and methodological approach can be applied to other contemporary state-level policy change for which groups and organizations have mobilized such as welfare reform, gay marriage legislation, and adoption of Defense of Marriage Acts.