The logic of Gamson's Law

甘森定律的逻辑

• 批准号: 0518192
• 负责人: Gary Cox
• 金额: $ 21.81万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2005
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2005-07-01 至 2008-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0518192&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: logic; Gamson; Law

Political parties, when forming coalition governments, are greatly concerned with the allocation of cabinet portfolios: how many (and which) posts will each party get? In the extensive literature on this issue, the most prominent landmark is Gamson's Law. Gamson (1961, 376) argued that parties seeking to form a coalition government would each demand a share of portfolios proportional to the amount of resources-specifically, seats in the assembly-that each contributed to the coalition. Early work strongly supported a modified version of this hypothesis. Indeed, as noted by numerous scholars, Gamson's Law is "one of the [statistically most successful generalizations] in political science."Its statistical success notwithstanding, Gamson's Law has been appropriately challenged on theoretical grounds. The argument in its favor is terse to the point of being a one-liner. Moreover, it is in tension with standard bargaining theories in which a party's ability to pivot between alternative minimal winning coalitions and/or its ability (as "formateur") to propose governments determine its portfolio payoff. Gamson's Law has been viewed as suffering from a "critical weakness," in that "it focuses on the effects of seats shares [when] the theoretically relevant concept is shares of voting weights" (italics in original). In this proposal, the investigators offer a new explanation of Gamson's Law. They argue that governments do not always form in an unconstrained bargaining environment, in which all parties are free to pivot between alternative majorities at will. In particular, they are sometimes constrained by pre-election pacts that publicly commit them to enter government with stipulated partners. They argue that the signatories to such pacts will need to negotiate, prior to the election, a principle that will guide the allocation of cabinet posts after the election (should the coalition succeed in getting into government); and that the most natural principle from a pre-election viewpoint is Gamsonian-largely because such a principle gives all parties in the coalition a strong incentive to work hard to provide the public good of a coalition majority (rather than free riding).Broader Impact: The research effort will be publicized on an existing web site, www.settingtheagenda.com. The investigators hope to enhance the infrastructure for comparative legislative research, by making public data, codebooks, and analytical files for academic, research and non-commercial purposes; and by continuing to foster the network of scholars and students with whom they collaborate. They also hope that a better understanding of how legislatures work, in places where democracy thrives, may contribute to strengthening legislative institutions in places where democracy struggles to establish itself.

政党在组建联合政府时，非常关心内阁的分配：每个政党将获得多少职位(以及哪些职位)？在关于这一问题的大量文献中，最突出的里程碑是伽姆逊定律。Gamson(1961,376)认为，寻求组建联合政府的政党将各自要求与各自为联合政府做出贡献的资源量成比例的投资组合份额--具体地说，是议会席位。早期的工作有力地支持了这一假说的修正版本。事实上，正如许多学者所指出的，伽姆逊定律是“政治学中[统计学上最成功的推论]之一”。尽管伽姆逊定律在统计学上取得了成功，但伽姆逊定律在理论上受到了适当的挑战。支持它的论点简洁到可以说是一句俏皮话。此外，它与标准的讨价还价理论格格不入，在标准讨价还价理论中，政党在可选的最小获胜联盟之间转移的能力和/或其提出政府建议的能力(作为“形式专家”)决定了其投资组合的收益。甘姆森定律一直被认为存在一个“关键弱点”，即“当[当]理论上相关的概念是投票权重的股份时，它侧重于席位股份的影响”(原文斜体)。在这项提案中，研究人员对伽姆逊定律提出了一种新的解释。他们认为，政府并不总是在不受约束的讨价还价环境中组建，在这种环境中，各方都可以自由地在替代多数席位之间随意切换。特别是，他们有时会受到选举前协议的限制，这些协议公开承诺他们与规定的合作伙伴一起进入政府。他们认为，这些协议的签署方需要在选举前谈判一项原则，该原则将指导选举后内阁职位的分配(如果联合政府成功进入政府)；从选举前的角度来看，最自然的原则是伽姆逊主义--很大程度上是因为这样的原则给了联合政府中的所有政党一个强大的动机，让他们努力工作，提供联盟多数派的公共利益(而不是搭便车)。广泛影响：这项研究成果将在现有的网站www.settingtheagenda.com上公布。调查人员希望通过为学术、研究和非商业目的公开数据、代码本和分析文件，并通过继续培养与他们合作的学者和学生网络，来加强比较立法研究的基础设施。他们还希望，在民主蓬勃发展的地方，更好地了解立法机构是如何运作的，可能有助于加强民主难以站稳脚跟的地方的立法机构。