Collaborative Research: Varieties of Crises, Elite Responses, and Executive Approval

该奖项的全部或部分资金来自《2021年美国救援计划法案》(公法117-2)。这个项目考察了四种主要类型的危机--经济、安全、自然灾害和公共卫生危机--以及它们如何影响当代民主国家公众对政治领导人的支持。理解这一点很重要，因为领导人的认可是政策制定者问责和民主稳定的关键晴雨表，而这两者都可能受到危机的破坏。该项目分析了四个因素的相互作用，这些因素在这些不同类型的危机中有系统地变化，并反过来影响对政治行政人员的公众评价：(1)公民为政策决策和结果分配责任的能力；(2)专家对有效政策应对的共识程度；(3)一个地区的特定危机在多大程度上造成其他地区的严重挑战或危机；以及(4)有效应对在多大程度上取决于公民的集体行动。收集了几个数据集，包括行政批准和危机的(季度)衡量标准；关于危机的领导人信息的基调和重要性；媒体对领导人信息的处理；以及(每月)对少数可获得此类数据的国家的领导人批准；以及在三个国家进行的基于调查的实验并公开提供。该奖项通过建设佐治亚州立大学学生项目实验室的研究能力来支持教育和多样性，佐治亚州立大学是一个少数民族服务机构，与其他四所大学的个人投资机构协调，这些大学也将吸引研究生和本科生参与这项工作。各国公众对领导人应对新冠肺炎公共卫生危机的反应存在令人费解的差异，这暴露出我们在理解危机事件如何转化为公众对领导人的评价方面存在重大差距。为了解决这些难题，该项目提出了一个统一的理论框架，确定了四种主要类型的危机：经济、安全、自然灾害和公共卫生。然后，报告从四个关键方面确定了这些危机，这四个方面应制约公众对高级官员的支持：影响责任归属的体制和政治背景和其他因素、专家共识的程度和政治家遵循专家建议的激励措施、蔓延到其他类型危机的可能性和性质，以及有效应对所需公民行动的程度。该项目收集数据以测试理论上有动机的假设：1)宏观时间序列跨国家数据集，以研究危机类型对48个国家政治高管的公众认可的影响；2)高频时间序列数据集，适合测试批准动态如何反映领导人的反应，以及18个可获得数据的国家的消息传递选择和媒体效应；以及3)在法国、意大利和墨西哥进行的联合实验，这三个国家具有不同的政治和制度背景。评估危机类型和维度之间联系的有效性，并验证提出的个人层面的机制。该项目由问责机构和行为计划以及SBE建立和拓宽计划支持。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2. This project examines four major types of crises -- economic, security, natural disaster, and public health crises – and how they influence public support for political leaders in contemporary democracies. This is important to understand because leader approval is a key barometer of policymaker accountability and democratic stability, both of which can be undermined by crises. This project analyzes the interplay of four factors which vary systematically across these different types of crises and how, in turn, these shape public evaluations of political executives: (1) the ability of citizens to assign responsibility for policy decisions and outcomes; (2) the degree of expert consensus on effective policy response; (3) how much a given crisis in one area generates acute challenges or crises in other areas; and (4) the extent to which an effective response depends on citizens acting collectively. Several data sets including (quarterly) measures of executive approval and crises; the tone and salience of leader messaging about the crises; the media’s treatment of leader messaging; and (monthly) leader approval for a smaller number of countries for which such data is available; and survey-based experiments in three countries are collected and made publicly available. The award supports education and diversity by building the research capacity of a student project lab at Georgia State University, a Minority Serving Institution, in coordination with PIs at four other universities who will also engage graduate and undergraduate students in this work. Puzzling divergences across countries in public reactions to leader responses to the COVID-19 public health crisis have revealed major gaps in our understanding of how crisis events translate into public assessments of leaders. To resolve these puzzles, this project advances a unifying theoretical framework that identifies four major types of crises: economic, security, natural disaster, and public health. It then locates these crises on four key dimensions which should condition public support of top officials: the institutional and political context and other factors that impact attribution of responsibility, degree of expert consensus and incentives for politicians to follow expert recommendations, the likelihood and nature of spill-over to other crisis types, and the degree to which citizen action is required for an effective response. The project collects data to test theoretically-motivated hypotheses using: 1) a macro time-series cross-national data set to study the effects of crisis type on public approval for political executives for 48 countries, 2) a high-frequency time-series data set appropriate to test how approval dynamics reflect leader responses, as well as messaging choices and media effects for 18 countries for which this data is available, and 3) conjoint experiments in France, Italy, and Mexico, countries with different political and institutional settings, to assess the validity of the links between crisis types and dimensions as well as to validate proposed individual-level mechanisms.This project is supported by the Accountable Institutions and Behavior Program and the SBE Build and Broaden Program.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.