Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Rediscovering the Party System and Its Effect on Voter Turnout

作者：James H. Kuklinksi和James D. Melton标题：博士论文研究：重新认识政党制度及其对选民投票率的影响通过界定公民可供选择的选择，一个国家的政党制度的结构可以影响其公民是否投票。 在以前的研究中，研究选民投票率的学者使用政党数量作为代理来代表政党系统的所有组成部分，但这种方法导致了不一致和看似令人费解的实证结果。 拟议的研究考虑了两个额外的组件相关的空间安排的政党通过选民：（1）最接近的政党，或政党，选民的理想点和（2）之间的相对距离最近的两个政党。 到目前为止，民主党对各国选民投票率的解释往往忽视或很少关注后两个政党制度的特征如何影响人们是否投票的决定。 本论文旨在确定每个政党系统的特点，以及三者的组合，影响投票率。 为了测试这些特征的影响，本研究将使用实验设计来操纵三方系统特征中的每一个，以确定它们的独立和联合效应。 实验的参与者将是来自中西部一个大都市区的美国公民。 每名参加者将被要求回答几个调查问题，并参加模拟选举。 本研究的目的，是以本次模拟选举的投票率为基础，归纳政党制度对投票率的影响。 如果成功，这项研究有可能对该领域产生重要影响。 首先，通过证明政党制度的这三个不同组成部分对投票率的独立影响，学者们将对政党制度如何影响投票率有更全面的了解，从而对投票率有更全面的了解。 第二，实验有可能大大提高比较政治研究的内部效度。 本研究中实验设计的成功使用可能会鼓励其他比较政治学家在自己的研究中使用实验。 学者们甚至可以将这种设计作为未来研究的模板，以解释其他制度变量如何影响选民投票率。

Primary Investigators: James H. Kuklinksi and James D. MeltonTitle: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Rediscovering the Party System and its Effect on Voter Turnout0720318AbstractBy defining the choices available for citizens to choose from, the structure of a country''s party system can influence whether or not its citizens turn out to vote. In previous work, scholars studying voter turnout have used the number of parties as a proxy to represent all the components of the party system, but this approach has led to inconsistent and seemingly inexplicable empirical results. The proposed study considers two additional components related to the spatial arrangement of the parties via the voter: (1) proximity of the closest party, or parties, to the voter''s ideal point and (2) relative distance between the two closest parties. To date, scholars'' explanations of voter turnout across countries tend either to ignore or pay little attention to how these latter two party system characteristics affect people''s decisions whether or not to vote. This dissertation seeks to identify how each of the party system characteristics, as well as the three in combination, influence turnout. To test the effects of these characteristics, this investigation will use an experimental design to manipulate each of the three party system characteristics to determine their independent and joint effects. The participants for the experiments will be US citizens from a large metropolitan area in the Midwest. Each participant will be asked to answer several survey questions and participate in a mock election. Based on the turnout in this mock election across the experimental conditions, the goal is to make generalizations about the effect of the party system on turnout. If successful, this study has the potential to have an important impact on the field. First, by demonstrating the independent effects of these three distinct components of the party system on turnout, scholars will have a more comprehensive understanding of how the party system affects turnout, and thus, will have a greater understanding of turnout in general. Second, experiments have the potential to greatly improve the internal validity of comparative political research. The successful use of an experimental design in this study may encourage other comparative political scientists to use experiments in their own research. Scholars could even use this design as a template for future research interested in explaining how other institutional variables affect voter turnout.