Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Party Entry and Voter Coordination Across Electoral Systems: A Natural Experiment

政治学博士论文研究：跨选举制度的政党进入和选民协调：一个自然实验

• 批准号: 1124469
• 负责人: Brian Crisp
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-01 至 2012-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124469&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

How can we explain the number of parties that enter electoral competition? Related to this, how can we explain the coordination of voters around a subset of these parties? These questions are fundamental to representative democracy and their implications are far ranging. For example, where there are too many parties of a particular type, perhaps Left-of-Center, and voters fail to discern which oens are truly viable, one well-coordinated party on the Right may overwhelming sweep to power despite the relative low levels of popular support. Political scientists have long investigated these questions, typically through quantitative, cross-national institutional analyses, but debate still exists on imporatn topics such as the effects of differences in electoral laws on both entry and coordination. This project leverages a cotnrolled comparison to provide clear and straightforward insights into both classic and original causal arguments. In the U.K., elections to the regional parliaments take place within the smae geographic districts as elections to the national parliament. The electoral rules used in these two sets of elections, however, are different. This creates a controlled comparison where we can explore the counterfactual: how would entry and coordination vary if we modified the electoral rules, but left the set of voters and the districts' characteristics intact? This research will explore this question by integrating three sources of data to provide a nuanced picture of strategic party entry and voter coordination: (1) electoral data disaggregated to the district level; (2) qualitative evidence gathered from interviews with party leaders about entry decisions; and (3) individual-level survey data about vote choice.Findings from this project should be applicable in a number of countries around the world that are facing debates on the merits of electoral reform and political devolution. Especially regarding mixed member systems, where the implications for strategic entry and coordination are still unclear, the finding of this project will speak directly to this important institutional choice. As mixed member systems are currently the most popular new form of electoral rules under adoption around the world, this project stands to make an important contribution to the decisions made by reformers.

我们如何解释参加选举竞争的政党数量？与此相关的是，我们如何解释选民围绕这些政党的一个子集的协调？这些问题是代议制民主的基础，其影响是广泛的。例如，如果有太多特定类型的政党，也许是中间偏左的政党，而选民无法辨别出哪些政党真正可行，那么一个协调良好的右翼政党可能会以压倒性优势上台，尽管民众的支持率相对较低。政治学家长期以来一直在研究这些问题，通常是通过定量的、跨国家的机构分析，但在一些重要的话题上仍然存在争议，例如选举法的差异对进入和协调的影响。这个项目利用综合比较来提供对经典和原始因果关系论点的清晰和直接的见解。在英国，地区议会选举和国家议会选举一样，都是在SMEA地理区域内举行的。然而，这两套选举使用的选举规则是不同的。这创造了一种受控比较，我们可以在其中探索反事实：如果我们修改了选举规则，但保持选民集合和选区特征不变，参选和协调会有什么变化？这项研究将通过整合三个数据来源来探索这个问题，以提供战略政党加入和选民协调的微妙图景：(1)按地区分类的选举数据；(2)从政党领导人关于加入决定的访谈中收集的定性证据；以及(3)关于投票选择的个人调查数据。这个项目的结果应该适用于世界上许多面临选举改革和政治权力下放的优点的辩论的国家。特别是对于混合成员制度，其对战略进入和协调的影响仍然不清楚，该项目的发现将直接说明这一重要的体制选择。由于混合成员制是目前世界各地正在采用的最受欢迎的新形式的选举规则，该项目将对改革者作出的决定作出重要贡献。