Political Party Database Project: How Parties Shape Democracy in Parliamentary Systems

比较政治学和政治学中的一个关键问题是，老牌政党如何能够在让公民参与政治进程的同时，最好地科普经济、社会和环境问题。许多实行议会民主制的国家目前正面临多重代表性危机。作为回应，公民有时会转向激进的新政党，或者变得不满并完全退出政治进程。这些事态发展提出了一些关键问题，即政党如何应对公民的不满和不满，这些变化如何影响政党与公民的联系，以及政党内部和政党之间的政治平衡。这些都不是新问题，但缺乏现成的标准化跨国数据阻碍了这一领域的比较研究。该项目旨在通过促进对关键政治机构和进程的系统性跨国研究，增进对议会民主制中代表性的理解。在学术价值方面，该项目将汇集来自20个国家的学者，分析先前收集的关于这20个国家160多个政党的数据。数据的范围将使研究人员能够分析政党结构和资源对民主代表性的影响。就更广泛的影响而言，该项目的一个关键成果是建立了一个免费的在线政党数据库。项目成员将通过在美国和欧洲举办讲习班来促进对数据库的认识和使用，这些讲习班将专门为向潜在受益者介绍数据而设计，包括促进民主的非政府组织、相关领域的学者和研究生。为该项目提供的数据和分析将有助于目前关于如何在政党财政、党内民主和妇女参政等领域最好地加强以政党为基础的代议制民主的辩论。该项目不仅汇集了来自许多国家的学者，而且还汇集了各种互补的专门知识，包括选举制度、政治财政、党内民主、妇女参政和利益集团代表性。这种多样性是该项目不可或缺的一部分;它将允许数据以多种方式进行结构化和分析，以便多个研究和从业者社区能够从数据中做出有意义的推断。该项目将加强跨代和跨国研究网络，博士和博士后学生在项目中发挥关键作用。该项目还有意识地促进女学者参与曾经以男性为主的领域，妇女占项目小组领导人的三分之一以上。

A key question in comparative politics and political science concerns how established political parties can best cope with economic, social and environmental problems while engaging citizens in the political process. Many countries with parliamentary democracies are currently facing multiple crises of representation. In response, citizens sometimes turn to radical new party alternatives, or become disaffected and pull out of the political process altogether. Such developments raise critical questions about how parties respond to citizens' disaffection and discontent, and about how these changes affect their links with citizens, and the political balances within and between parties. These are not new questions, but the lack of readily available and standardized cross-national data has hindered comparative research in this area. This project aims to advance the understanding of representation in parliamentary democracies by promoting the systematic cross-national study of key political institutions and processes. In terms of intellectual merit, the project will bring together scholars from twenty countries to analyze previously collected data on over 160 political parties in those twenty countries. The scope of the data will allow the researchers to analyze the impact of party structures and resources on democratic representation. In terms of broader impacts, a key outcome of the project is a free on-line Political Party Database. The project members will promote awareness and use of the Database by holding workshops in the United States and Europe which will be specifically designed to introduce the data to potential beneficiaries, including democracy-promoting non-governmental organizations, scholars in related fields, and graduate students. The data and analyses produced for this project will contribute to ongoing debates about how best to strengthen party-based representative democracies in areas such as political party finance, intra-party democracy, and female participation in politics.This project not only brings together scholars from a large number of countries, but also with diverse and complementary expertise, including expertise on electoral systems, political finance, intra-party democracy, women's participation in politics, and interest-group representation. This diversity is integral to the project; it will allow the data to be structured and analyzed in ways so that multiple research and practitioner communities will be able to make meaningful inferences from the data. The undertaking will strengthen cross-generational as well as cross-national research networks, with doctoral and post-doctoral students playing key roles in the project. The project also consciously promotes participation of female scholars in what was once a predominantly male subfield, with women constituting over one third of the leaders of the project team.