Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Emergence of Political Careers and Parties, New York 1777-1821

博士论文研究：政治生涯和政党的出现，纽约，1777-1821

• 批准号: 2001930
• 负责人: John Levi Martin
• 金额: $ 1.59万
• 依托单位: University of Chicago
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-01 至 2022-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2001930&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Emergence; Political

As U.S. citizens, we tend to take for granted the existence and operation of electoral parties in the contemporary United States. While they have been the subject of much study, we know very little regarding how modern electoral parties emerged in our history. Focusing on the State of New York, the pivot for the first national party system, this project provides a systematic analysis of the social and political factors that structured the actions of those individuals who built the first parties. The project investigates how they formed networks of political support that spanned across space as well as different levels of government (local, state, federal) and traces how local political elites were pulled into the emerging federal party system. Findings from the project will provide greater insight into the origins of political parties in our democracy, and help to inform our understanding of contemporary political parties through greater detail regarding their evolution. While political parties were a major concern of scholars across several disciplines, answers to the question of where parties come from are still almost entirely absent. Progress in addressing this question has been stymied in part by the absence of systematic individual-level data. This project approaches the question of party formation through two analyses that include these data. First, because in America the organization of parties was intrinsically bound up with the organization of the state and because creating a state involves office-creation, this project will first reconstruct the structure of the larger system of offices that political elites had to navigate. The project will construct a novel database of all civil, judicial, and military offices from the federal to the state and local level from 1777 to 1821 in the state of New York. Using mobility tables, vacancy chain and sequence analysis, the project investigates the emergence of political careers as meaningful sequences of offices held by individuals. This forms the backdrop for the second analysis. For a subset of 730 political elites who were active during the crucial years between the Constitutional Convention and the election of 1800, the project adds information on party affiliation, socio-demographic characteristics, and the multiple social networks in which they were embedded. Using this comprehensive dataset, the project employs a regression framework to study the factors that determined which political elites affiliated with which party. Findings from this project will inform theories of democracy and its evolution, as well as provide an important historical portrait of individual political careers at a critical time in the development of our nation.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.

作为美国公民，我们倾向于认为选举政党在当代美国的存在和运作是理所当然的。虽然他们一直是许多研究的主题，但我们对现代选举政党是如何在我们的历史上出现的知之甚少。该项目以纽约州为重点，是第一个国家政党制度的支点，系统分析了构成第一个政党缔造者行动的社会和政治因素。该项目调查了他们如何形成跨越空间以及不同级别政府(地方、州、联邦)的政治支持网络，并追踪当地政治精英是如何被拉入新兴的联邦政党体系的。该项目的发现将提供更多关于政党在我们的民主中的起源的洞察，并帮助我们通过更详细地了解当代政党的演变来了解它们。尽管政党是几个学科的学者主要关注的问题，但对于政党来自哪里的问题，几乎仍然没有答案。解决这一问题的进展在一定程度上受到缺乏系统的个人数据的阻碍。该项目通过包括这些数据的两项分析来探讨政党组建问题。首先，因为在美国，政党的组织与国家的组织本质上是捆绑在一起的，而且因为创建一个国家涉及到办公室的创建，这个项目将首先重建政治精英不得不导航的更大的办公室系统的结构。该项目将建立一个新的数据库，其中包括从1777年到1821年纽约州从联邦到州和地方各级的所有民事、司法和军事办公室。该项目使用流动表、空缺链和序列分析，调查了政治职业作为个人担任的有意义的职位序列的出现。这构成了第二个分析的背景。对于在制宪会议和1800年选举之间的关键时期活跃的730名政治精英，该项目增加了关于政党归属、社会人口特征以及他们所在的多重社会网络的信息。利用这个全面的数据集，该项目采用了一个回归框架来研究决定哪些政治精英属于哪个政党的因素。这个项目的发现将为民主及其演变的理论提供信息，并提供在我们国家发展的关键时刻个人政治生涯的重要历史肖像。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。