MMS Mid-Career Research Fellowship Program: The Spatial Context of Political Phenomena.

该奖项是根据2009年美国复苏和再投资法案（公法111-5）资助的。政治，社会和经济现象发生在一个空间背景下：决策者的行动和互动受到他们发生的地方的特点的制约。已经开发了各种方法来建模和测量空间背景。然而，对于许多现象，现有的测量和建模方法是不够的，并且需要更复杂的上下文表征。具体而言，本研究考虑了一类具有两个重要特征的问题：决策，行为和结果在多个层面上受到上下文的影响，并且相关的空间上下文是动态的而不是静态的。具有这些特点的问题的一个重要的实质性例子是区域治理，即在一个特定地理区域内两个或两个以上政府之间协调决策。在区域治理中，区域行为体的决定受到地方和区域两级空间背景以及区域内人民之间动态相互联系的影响。这项研究将涉及开发新的空间背景措施，并将这些措施应用于区域治理问题。利用地理信息系统和空间分析工具，研究将涉及从人口普查和其他数据构建多层次空间背景的灵活措施，描述区域内行为体的流动性和动态相互联系，对替代区域边界的影响进行反事实分析，并测试关于动态和多层次背景如何影响各种政治现象的假设，包括但不限于区域治理。改进空间背景的衡量标准，更好地了解这种背景如何影响社会、经济和政治结果，将有助于决策者制定更适合其独特的地方和区域空间背景的公共政策。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Political, social and economic phenomena take place within a spatial context: the actions and interactions of decision-makers are conditioned by characteristics of the places in which they occur. Various methods have been developed to model and measure spatial context. There are many phenomena, however, for which existing measurement and modeling approaches are inadequate and for which more complex characterizations of context are necessary. Specifically, this research considers a class of problems with two important characteristics: decisions, behavior and outcomes are shaped by the effects of context at multiple levels, and the relevant spatial context is dynamic rather than static. An important substantive example of a problem with these characteristics is regional governance, that is, coordinated policy-making between two or more governments within a given geographic area. In regional governance, decisions by regional actors are affected by spatial context at both the local and regional levels, and by the dynamic interconnectedness of people within their regions. This research will involve developing of new measures of spatial context and applying these measures to problems of regional governance. Using geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis tools, the research will involve constructing flexible measures of multi-level spatial context from Census and other data, characterizing the mobility and dynamic interconnectedness of actors within regions, conducting counterfactual analyses of the impact of alternative regional boundaries, and testing hypotheses about how dynamic and multi-level context affects various political phenomena, including but not limited to regional governance. Improved measures of spatial context, and a better understanding of how such context shapes social, economic and political outcomes, will help policymakers develop public policies that are more attuned to their unique local and regional spatial context.