Collaborative Research: The Mapping of American Legislatures

美国政治两极分化的加剧引起了学者、记者和公众越来越多的关注。对党派和意识形态冲突日益加剧的担忧，引发了有关美国政府代表性、问责制和效率的重要问题。尽管关注程度很高，但关于两极分化的原因和后果的学术知识是有限的。这种粗略的理解尤其适用于对民选官员两极分化的研究，这些研究几乎完全集中在美国国会。尽管在这一背景下对两极分化已经做了很多重要的工作，但对参众两院两极分化历史的研究只能对两极分化的原因及其影响提供有限的视角。然而，州立法机构几乎是研究政治两极分化的理想场所。各国不仅在其公民的意见和态度方面各不相同，而且在可能导致或多或少的党派冲突的选举和立法环境方面也各不相同。然而，迄今为止，这种关于州政治的研究一直受到两个问题的阻碍。首先，唱名投票的数据——用于衡量两极分化的标准——并不普遍可用。其次，即使有这样的数据，各州的两极分化指标也无法进行比较。该项目的研究人员提出了解决这两个问题的方法，并创建了各州立法者的意识形态衡量标准，这些标准可以在不同时期、不同州和美国国会之间进行比较。这些措施又被用来评估各州立法机构内部的两极分化程度。初步发现表明，极化程度存在很大差异。两党在一些州的意识形态差异很小，而另一些州则存在明显的意识形态分歧。该项目还表明，随着时间的推移，两极分化在不同的州发生了不同的演变。虽然两极分化在大多数州的立法机构中有所加剧，但在其他州却保持不变或有所减少。这一建议的智力价值是双重的。首先，现有的个人和总体意识形态偏好的衡量标准将大大增强，并与地区和州的人口统计和选举数据联系起来。其次，该项目将支持多项研究，这些研究将运用新方法来研究长期存在的政治问题。这些难题包括两极分化的原因和后果，公民和代表之间的多重关系，以及各州不同政策选择的制度和意识形态基础。该项目做出了一些贡献。它将产生涵盖所有50个州的三个可公开访问的数据集：立法点名数据，目前仅提供1999-2000年的数据；立法者意识形态的估计；以及政治极化和意识形态冲突的措施。这三种数据集对学者、从业者、记者和公众都有广泛的用途。在此过程中，该项目将促进参与研究项目的研究生的专业化。最后，政策制定者和记者将进一步了解制度改革与意识形态冲突之间的关系。

The increasing polarization of US politics has drawn a growing amount of attention from scholars, journalists, and the public. Concerns about increasing levels of partisan and ideological conflict have raised important questions about representativeness, accountability, and effectiveness of the American government.Despite the level of attention, scholarly knowledge of the causes and consequences of polarization is limited. This sketchy understanding is especially true of research on the polarization of elected officials, which has focused almost exclusively on the US Congress. Although much important work has been done on polarization in that context, examination of the history of polarization in the House and Senate provides only a limited perspective on the causes of polarization and its effects. State legislatures, however, are an almost ideal setting for studying political polarization. States vary not only with respect to opinions and attitudes of their citizens, but also with respect to the electoral and legislative contexts that might contribute to greater or lesser partisan conflict. Yet such research on state politics has been hampered by two problems to date. First, the data on roll call voting--used in standard measures of polarization--are not generally available. Second, where such data are available, polarization measures are not comparable across states. The investigators in this project propose a solution to both problems and create ideological measures of individual state legislators that are comparable over time, across states, and with the US Congress. These measures are in turn used to assess the level of polarization within each state legislature. Preliminary findings establish wide variation in the extent of polarization. Some states show very little ideological difference between the two parties, while others are marked by a pronounced ideological divide. The project also demonstrates that polarization has evolved differently over time in different states. While polarization has grown in most state legislatures, it has remained constant or diminished in others. The intellectual merits of this proposal are twofold. First, existing measures of individual and aggregate ideological preferences will be substantially augmented and linked to district and state demographic and electoral data. Second, this project will support multiple studies applying the new measures to study longstanding political questions. These puzzles include the causes and consequences of polarization, the multiple relationships between citizens and representatives, and the institutional and ideological underpinnings of differing policy choices across the states.The project makes several contributions. It will yield three publicly accessible datasets ranging over all 50 states: legislative roll call data, which is only available today for 1999-2000; estimates of legislator ideology; and measures of political polarization and ideological conflict. All three data sets have numerous uses for scholars, practitioners, journalists, and the public. Along the way, the project will advance the professionalization of graduate students who participate in the research projects. Finally, policymakers and journalists would acquire additional insight into the relationship between institutional reform and ideological conflict.