Doctoral Dissertation Research: Why Do Ethnic Parties Flourish or Die?

博士论文研究：少数民族政党为何兴衰？

• 批准号: 1746524
• 负责人: David Laitin
• 金额: $ 2.24万
• 依托单位: Stanford University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-15 至 2021-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1746524&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Why; Do

Ethnic political parties - i.e., parties that advocate for the interests of a particular identity group - are a pervasive and often problematic feature of democracies around the world. The politicization of ethnicity can deepen identity-based divisions, cause interethnic conflict, and undermine government accountability. Given these significant negative consequences, it is important to ask: Why do some ethnic parties succeed in mobilizing their target co-ethnic population, whereas others fail? This project tackles this question through studying the case of Karachi, Pakistan - one of the world's largest and most diverse megacities, and a site of endemic ethnic conflict. In particular, it will compare the political behavior of the two largest ethnic groups in Karachi - the Muhajirs and the Pashtuns - in order to develop and test a theory of ethnic party success and failure. In contrast to existing approaches, this approach takes seriously the idea that group-specific beliefs and norms are an important driver of the politicization of identity.Based upon extensive qualitative data collected through three field trips to Karachi, this project conceptualizes bloc-voting for an ethnic party as a coordination problem. This coordination problem is solved when co-ethnics come to share -- often as a result of suffering a common shock - - the belief that (1) their political fates are 'linked' and (2) their ethnic party is best able to serve these linked interests. By contrast, existing theories of ethnic politics are heavily focused on instrumental explanations of ethnic voting that, while useful, are incomplete for both theoretical and empirical reasons. Theoretically, dominant accounts of ethnic voting do not take seriously differences between ethnic groups, in effect disregarding a longstanding social psychology literature on the development of group norms and social incentive structures, and a small incipient literature " limited so far to American Politics " that recognizes the importance of heterogeneity in political understandings and behaviors across ethnic. Empirically, this work moves existing debates beyond an almost exclusive focus on Africa and India. The cases social scientists choose affect the answers they get, which makes extending the literature beyond the study of particular regions a critical undertaking . Finally, this project corrects the literature's tendency to focus empirically on rural areas: as the world rapidly urbanizes, the study of identity politics must pay special attention to how ethnicity manifests politically in diverse metropolises.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

民族政党-即，主张某一特定身份群体利益的政党-是世界各地民主国家普遍存在的一个特点，而且往往存在问题。族裔问题的政治化会加深基于身份的分歧，造成族裔间冲突，并破坏政府问责制。鉴于这些严重的负面后果，我们必须问：为什么有些族裔政党成功地动员了他们的目标同族裔人口，而另一些政党却失败了？本项目通过研究巴基斯坦卡拉奇的案例来解决这一问题，卡拉奇是世界上最大和最多样化的特大城市之一，也是地方性种族冲突的发生地。特别是，它将比较卡拉奇两个最大的民族群体--穆哈吉尔人和普什图人--的政治行为，以发展和检验民族政党成功和失败的理论。与现有的方法相比，这种方法认真对待的想法，即群体特定的信仰和规范是一个重要的驱动力的政治化的identity.Based广泛的定性数据收集，通过三个实地考察卡拉奇，该项目概念化集团投票的一个民族政党作为一个协调问题。这种协调问题的解决，当同种族的人来共享-往往是由于遭受共同的冲击-的信念，（1）他们的政治命运是'连接'和（2）他们的民族党是最好的能够服务于这些相关的利益。相比之下，现有的种族政治理论主要集中在种族投票的工具性解释上，虽然有用，但由于理论和经验的原因都是不完整的。从理论上讲，占主导地位的种族投票帐户不认真对待种族群体之间的差异，实际上忽视了长期的社会心理学文献的发展群体规范和社会激励结构，以及一个小的早期文献“到目前为止仅限于美国政治”，承认异质性的重要性，在政治理解和行为的种族。从经验上讲，这项工作使现有的辩论超越了几乎只关注非洲和印度的范围。社会科学家选择的案例会影响他们得到的答案，这使得将文献扩展到特定地区的研究之外成为一项关键任务。最后，该项目纠正了以往文献中以农村地区为研究对象的倾向：随着世界的快速城市化，身份政治的研究必须特别关注不同大都市中种族的政治表现。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。