Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Citizen Input, Policy Outcomes, and Local Representation.

对于民主社会来说，最困难的选择之一是代表是由选民选举产生还是由其他官员任命。该项目通过检验现有政治学研究中的两个假说，探讨了这种选择对代表性的影响。第一，与委任选举相比，直选是否更能代表大多数人的意愿？第二，直选是否导致某些群体--特殊利益集团--获得比其他群体更好的代表性？我通过利用当地机构的巨大差异来解决这些问题，收集了三个州的三个地方办事处的原始数据集：财产税评估员、学校董事会成员和消防区受托人。该项目完成后，这些独特的政治机构和政策成果数据集将传播给更广泛的学术界，构成一项重要的公共产品。该项目的学术价值与其对机构和地方治理研究的贡献有关。该项目关注这三个案例有两个关键原因。首先，每个案件都包括相当数量的政治管辖区(城镇、学区或消防区)，这些司法管辖区随着时间的推移从直选转变为任命(反之亦然)。如果分析只是简单地比较在单个时间点选举或任命的司法管辖区--这是对这个问题的大多数现有研究的做法--就很难评估政策上的任何差异是由于直选，还是由于与选举决定有关的先前存在的差异。相比之下，对改变的司法管辖区的关注允许比较选举或任命的司法管辖区之间的政策结果，同时控制在改变之前存在的任何差异。其次，每个接受审查的办公室都负责做出对公民生活有切实影响的决定。因此，通过研究直选如何影响财产税评估、标准化测试分数和消防部门的反应时间，这项研究将比其他分析政策结果的间接测量的代表性研究更准确地评估公民和政府之间的联系。该项目的更广泛影响与其对政治机构和地方政府研究的贡献有关。更实际的是，这个项目的发现将有助于为公共政策问题提供信息--应该如何挑选官员--从州政府和地方政府到私人委员会，无数组织都在积极应对这个问题。通过更强有力的研究设计和原始数据收集，该项目寻求提供比现有研究中少数相互矛盾的发现更可信的政策处方。

One of the most difficult choices for democratic societies is whether representatives are to be elected by voters or appointed by other officials. This project asks how the choice affects representation, testing two hypotheses from existing political science research. First, do direct elections lead to more representation of the majority's preferences, relative to appointment? Second, do direct elections cause certain groups - special interests" - to receive better representation than others? I address these questions by leveraging the substantial variation in local institutions, assembling original data sets on three local offices in three states: property tax assessors; school board members; and fire protection district trustees. Upon completion of the project, these unique data sets of political institutions and policy outcomes will be disseminated to the broader scholarly community, constituting a significant public good.The intellectual merit of this project is related to its contribution to the study of institutions and local governance. The project focuses on these three cases for two key reasons. First, each case includes a significant number of political jurisdictions (towns, school districts, or fire districts) that change from direct elections to appointment (or vice versa) over time. If the analysis were to simply compare jurisdictions that elect or appoint at a single point in time - the approach of most existing studies of this question - it would be difficult to assess whether any difference in policy was due to direct elections, or due to pre-existing differences that are associated with the decision to elect. In contrast, the focus on jurisdictions that change permits comparison of policy outcomes between jurisdictions that elect or appoint, while controlling for any differences that existed prior to the switch. Second, each of the offices under examination is responsible for making decisions that have tangible impacts on citizens' lives. Thus, by examining how direct elections shape property tax assessments, standardized test scores, and fire department response times, the research will facilitate an evaluation of the link between citizens and government more precisely than other studies of representation that analyze indirect measures of policy outcomes.The broader impacts of the project are associated with its contributions to the study of political institutions and local government. More practically, the findings from this project will help to inform a public policy question - how officials should be selected - with which countless organizations, from state and local governments to private boards, actively wrestle with. Through stronger research designs and original data gathering, this project seeks to offer more credible policy prescriptions than do the handful of conflicting findings from existing studies.