Direct Democracy and the Significance of the Framing of Proposals

直接民主和提案框架的意义

• 批准号: 1421993
• 负责人: Isaac Martin
• 金额: $ 16.39万
• 依托单位: University of California-San Diego
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-15 至 2017-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1421993&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Direct; Democracy; Significance; Framing; Proposals

What attributes make a law more or less likely to inspire consent of the governed? Voters may weigh the costs and benefits of proposed legislation, but in order for voters to form a considered judgment of the costs, they must be able to correctly perceive them, attribute them to the responsible policy makers, and evaluate them in terms of their moral values. Many public opinion surveys and laboratory studies document the everyday cognitive biases that make these tasks difficult even in the area of tax law where costs are explicit. Recent theory in behavioral public finance tells us that law itself may be designed to make informed decision-making easier, for example, by adjusting the timing of implementation or explicitly stating burdens and benefits in such a way that voters can more clearly perceive, attribute, and evaluate those costs and benefits. Insights from behavioral finance have not yet been well integrated into analysis of democratic processes. The research tests whether policy design features may help voters evaluate proposed laws. By bringing insights from behavioral finance to the process of direct democracy, this project will extend our understanding of both. This study will contribute to our knowledge of the legal conditions that make possible a sustainable system of public finance.As one part of testing this framework, the project will collect and digitize the universe of ballot measures relevant to public finance in the analytical site, preserving an important record of democracy that will be made available on-line to researchers and the public. Digitizing these records will also permit a statistical analysis of which policy features affect how voters perceive and respond to the costs of public policy. The project will also train new scholars in the analytics of democracy and public finance, contributing to deepening citizens' understanding.

什么属性使法律或多或少地可能激发被统治者的同意？选民可能会权衡拟议立法的成本和收益，但为了让选民对成本形成深思熟虑的判断，他们必须能够正确地感知成本，将成本归因于负责任的政策制定者，并从道德价值观的角度对其进行评估。许多民意调查和实验室研究记录了日常认知偏见，这些偏见使这些任务变得困难，即使在成本明确的税法领域。行为公共财政学的最新理论告诉我们，法律本身的设计可能是为了使明智的决策更容易，例如，通过调整实施的时间或明确说明负担和收益，以使选民能够更清楚地感知，归属和评估这些成本和收益。 行为金融学的观点还没有很好地整合到民主进程的分析中。 这项研究测试了政策设计特征是否有助于选民评估拟议的法律。通过将行为金融学的见解引入直接民主的过程，这个项目将扩展我们对两者的理解。这项研究将有助于我们了解使可持续的公共财政制度成为可能的法律的条件，作为测试这一框架的一部分，该项目将在分析网站上收集和分析与公共财政有关的所有投票措施，保存一份重要的民主记录，供研究人员和公众在线查阅。将这些记录数字化还将允许对哪些政策特征影响选民如何看待和应对公共政策的成本进行统计分析。该项目还将培训民主和公共财政分析方面的新学者，为加深公民的理解做出贡献。