Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Turning Majorities into Minorities-Heresthetical Rhetoric of Parliamentary Oppositions

政治学博士论文研究：把多数变成少数——议会反对派的异端修辞

• 批准号: 1024190
• 负责人: Burt Monroe
• 金额: $ 0.77万
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2010
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2010-09-01 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1024190&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

How do opposition parties in Parliamentary democracies challenge the majority coalition? What do legislative political losers do in order to turn the tables and become winners? This research project uses legislative speech in parliamentary democracies as quantitative data, in order to analyze the ways in which opposition parties try to manipulate the dimensions of the legislative agenda, and thus split the majority coalition. The investigator assumes that opposition parties use speech strategically, i.e., they choose to address issues that might have high potential of splitting the majority. The probability of splitting the majority coalition increases when dormant issues that are not highly correlated with the dominant ideological dimension become more salient, and when the priorities of coalition members (parties, factions, legislators) with regard to these are diverse.This model is tested using speech data from three democratic parliamentary legislatures: The British, the Israeli, and the Hungarian. The investigator focuses on important periods in the political histories of these countries-the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the mid 1990's, the process leading to the return of the Labor party under Tony Blair to power in the UK after 18 years of Conservative rule, and the era following the democratization in Hungary. The findings will thus help explain legislative dynamics under different institutions and historical trajectories, and will have implications for a variety of parliamentary democracies.The analysis would offer insights into the "black box" of legislative democratic politics, by shedding light on an underdeveloped literature of parliamentary activity: given the fact that the parliamentary opposition is numerically and institutionally disadvantaged, what do the losers do to become winners? This question is central to our understanding of democratic institutions. In addition, the research introduces a novel methodology to operationalize and measure legislative opposition strategy. Finally, data sets, including the rhetorical data, and the findings will become available for further research.

议会民主中的反对党如何挑战多数联盟？立法上的政治失败者做了什么才能扭转局面，成为赢家？ 本研究以议会制民主国家的立法演说为量化数据，分析在野党如何操纵立法议程的维度，从而分裂多数党联盟。 调查者假设反对党战略性地使用言论，即，他们选择处理那些极有可能分裂多数的问题。 当与占主导地位的意识形态维度没有高度相关的休眠问题变得更加突出时，以及当联盟成员（政党，派别，立法者）的优先事项与这些不同时，分裂多数联盟的概率增加。 调查员专注于这些国家的政治历史的重要时期-以色列-巴勒斯坦和平进程在20世纪90年代中期，导致托尼布莱尔的工党在保守党统治18年后重新掌权的过程，以及匈牙利民主化后的时代。 因此，研究结果将有助于解释不同制度和历史轨迹下的立法动态，并将对各种议会民主产生影响。分析将通过揭示不发达的议会活动文献，提供对立法民主政治“黑匣子”的见解：在人数和体制上都处于劣势的议会反对派，如何从输家变成赢家？ 这个问题是我们理解民主制度的核心。 此外，本研究还引入了一种新的方法来操作和衡量立法反对战略。 最后，包括修辞数据在内的数据集和研究结果将可用于进一步研究。