Collaborative Research: Electoral Systems as Incentive Structures for Interparty and Intraparty Politics

为什么不同国家、州和地区的代表性不同？尽管大多数政治家都努力证明自己值得连任，但公民经常对他们当选官员的行为表示失望。本项目根据近150个国家75年来至少2750次国家立法机构选举的数据开发了一套新的数据集。这些数据将被用来检验公民获得的代表类型在多大程度上是用于选择其代表的选举规则的函数。具体而言，该项目考察了选举规则是否解释了政党间政治（政党数量及其承诺的政策种类）和政党内政治（代表在向选民提供纲领性政策或特殊奖励与选区服务之间取得的平衡）的变化。这个项目测试选举规则是否解释了政党间政治的变化——政党的有效数量、政党在政策空间中的位置、公民偏好和政策之间的一致性——以及党内政治——竞选的内容、提供的选区服务的数量、立法机构的设计、政党纪律的水平，以及纲领政策和猪肉桶政治之间的平衡。这种努力在两个方面是独一无二的。首先，该项目编制了一个数据集，其中包含近150个国家在75年期间进行2750多次国家立法机构选举所使用的系统的详细信息。其次，它使用模拟来透明地生成间隔级指标，在党际层面上，选举制度鼓励选民对广泛的产品表达他们的异质偏好，在党内方面，允许选民用值得注意的个人填补立法机构，而不是政党的自动化。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，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。

Why does the nature of representation vary across countries, states, and localities? Despite the fact that most politicians work hard to prove they deserve re-election, citizens often express frustration with the behavior of their elected officials. This project develops a new data set based on at least 2750 elections for national legislatures in nearly 150 countries for a 75 year period. The data will be used to test to what extent the type of representation citizens receive is a function of the electoral rules used to choose their representatives. Specifically, the project examines whether electoral rules explain variation in interparty politics — the number of parties and the variety of the policies they promise — and intraparty politics — the balance representatives strike between offering their constituents programmatic policy or particularistic rewards and constituency service.This project tests whether electoral rules explain variation in interparty politics — the effective number of parties, parties’ locations in the policy space, congruence between citizens’ preferences and policy — and intraparty politics — the content of campaigns, the amount of constituency service provided, the design of legislative institutions, levels of party discipline, and the balance struck between programmatic policy and pork barrel politics. The effort is unique in two ways. First, the project compiles a dataset with the details of the systems used to conduct more than 2,750 elections for national legislatures in nearly 150 countries for a 75-year-period. Second, it uses simulations to transparently generate interval-level indicators of the extent to which , on the interparty dimension, electoral systems encourage voters to express their heterogeneous preferences for a wide array of offerings and, on the intraparty front, allow voters to fill legislatures with noteworthy individuals as opposed to party automatons.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.