Sustainable Democracy - A Conference Proposal

可持续民主——会议提案

• 批准号: 0832970
• 负责人: William Bianco
• 金额: $ 4.98万
• 依托单位: Indiana University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2008-08-01 至 2011-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0832970&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Sustainable; Democracy; Conference; Proposal

The project provides support for a conference on Sustainable Democracy, to be held at the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis at Indiana University. The conference is designed to focus attention on new techniques and theories as they relate to a canonical question: what factors sustain democracy? The conference revisits a crucial set of democratic institutions, those that define majority rule decision-making processes, as they interact with social, economic, demographic, geographic, and cultural factors that can influence the outcomes of group decisions, from legislatures to local community groups. The intellectual merit of this proposal arises from its interdisciplinary linkage of studies of democratic decision-making in different contexts, from new or consolidating systems to established democracies and self-governing systems, by characterizing factors that shape processes and outcomes in a wide range of working democracies. This conference seeks to create linkages that work in both directions, borrowing from other disciplines to characterize the forces that shape individual preferences and other contextual factors, and providing insights about democratic processes that contribute to other disciplines, such as an improved ability to predict outcomes in Social-Ecological Systems (SES). The broader impact of this conference lies in its role as a first step in a new research program aimed at linking the analysis of a wide range of democratic systems. The goal is to move toward an interdisciplinary linkage of studies of democratic decision-making in different contexts, from new or consolidating systems to established democracies and self-governing systems, by characterizing factors that shape processes and outcomes in a wide range of working democracies. To these ends, conference proceedings juxtapose theory and empirics, exploring how the variation in democratic institutions and outcomes can be explained by the micro-foundations of democracy: the preferences held by decision-makers, their resulting incentives to cooperate and coordinate, and the political institutions in which these behaviors take place. Twelve outside scholars from a variety and disciplines, including Anthropology, Economics, and Geography. The conference also initiates a new research and training agenda at the Workshop, one that builds on its strengths and extends its focus. A second priority is to formulate a plan for new graduate, undergraduate, and practitioner training programs at the Workshop and elsewhere at IU based on this research program. These initiatives will be the subject of near-term training by the investigators working with other scholars. Finally, theories developed from the conference should provide some guidance to policymakers seeking more effective means of democratic decision-making.

该项目为将在印第安纳大学政治理论和政策分析讲习班举行的可持续民主会议提供支助。这次会议的目的是把注意力集中在新技术和理论上，因为它们与一个典型的问题有关：什么因素维持了民主？会议回顾了一套至关重要的民主制度，这些制度定义了多数决定的决策过程，因为它们与社会、经济、人口、地理和文化因素相互作用，可以影响群体决策的结果，从立法机构到当地社区团体。这一建议的知识价值在于，它将不同背景下的民主决策研究（从新的或巩固的制度到已建立的民主和自治制度）的跨学科联系起来，通过描述在广泛的民主国家中形成过程和结果的因素。本次会议旨在建立双向的联系，借鉴其他学科来描述塑造个人偏好和其他背景因素的力量，并为其他学科提供有关民主进程的见解，例如提高预测社会生态系统（SES）结果的能力。这次会议的更广泛影响在于它作为一个新的研究项目的第一步，该项目旨在将对广泛的民主制度的分析联系起来。目标是通过描述在广泛的工作中的民主国家中形成过程和结果的因素，走向不同背景下民主决策研究的跨学科联系，从新的或巩固的制度到已建立的民主和自治制度。为此，会议记录将理论与经验并列，探讨民主制度和结果的变化如何用民主的微观基础来解释：决策者的偏好，他们对合作和协调的激励，以及这些行为发生的政治制度。12位来自不同学科的外部学者，包括人类学、经济学和地理学。会议还在研讨会上启动了一项新的研究和培训议程，以其优势为基础，扩大其重点。第二项优先任务是根据该研究计划，在研讨会和印第安纳大学其他地方制定新的研究生、本科生和从业者培训计划。这些倡议将成为近期研究人员与其他学者合作培训的主题。最后，从会议中发展出来的理论应该为决策者寻求更有效的民主决策手段提供一些指导。