RAPID: Constitutional Change and Public Support for Minority Rights

保护少数人的权利是现代自由民主的一个标志。要做到这一点，民主国家往往依赖于宪法保障。然而，在这些权利尚未存在的地方，正式保障少数人的权利往往需要进行宪法改革。尽管修改宪法具有政治、社会和经济意义，但学者们尚未充分评估宪法变更是否会转化为公民如何看待少数民族权利的变化，以及与之相关的少数民族公民自身观点的变化。因此，宪法改革的尝试是否会让公众更接受少数群体的权利，或者是否会引发对少数群体权利的强烈反对，这一问题仍然没有得到充分的理论和研究。此外，目前尚不清楚这些努力将如何加强或削弱少数民族公民的政治效能感和对政治制度的支持。因此，这些问题的答案对自由民主治理的质量和稳定性具有重要意义。该项目利用现有工作的这一局限性，采用数据收集和研究的比较方法，审查试图改变宪法的政治影响。为此，该项目利用公民投票所创造的独特条件及其对支持少数群体权利——土著权利的影响，这是一种经常被忽视的权利形式。公投要求公民通过或拒绝一项宪法修正案，正式承认土著居民的权利，并建立一个土著咨询机构。通过在全民投票之前和之后的一段时间内进行的民意调查，该项目将深入了解(a)全民投票对公众支持少数群体权利的影响；(b)这种影响在多大程度上取决于先前对少数人权利的支持；(c)公投结果对少数民族公民政治态度和效能的影响。在这样做的过程中，该项目是对宪法全民投票对政治态度的影响的独特审查，也是对公众支持一般少数群体权利，特别是土著权利的现有文献的重要扩充。此外，本研究的结果将有助于深入了解试图改变宪法对少数民族公民对政治制度的依恋和信任的影响。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。

The protection of minority rights is a hallmark of modern liberal democracy. To do so, democracies often rely on constitutional guarantees. Where such rights do not already exist, however, formally guaranteeing minority rights often requires carrying out constitutional change. Despite the political, social, and economic significance of amending a constitution, scholars have yet to fully evaluate whether constitutional change translates into changes in how citizens view minority rights and, relatedly, the views of minority citizens themselves. As a result, it remains both undertheorized and understudied whether attempts at constitutional change engender greater public acceptance of minority rights or, alternatively, instigate a backlash against them. Moreover, it is unclear how such efforts might strengthen – or undermine – minority citizens’ sense of political efficacy and support for the political system. The answers to these questions thus have important implications for the quality and stability of liberal democratic governance. The project engages with this limitation of existing work by examining the political impact of attempts at constitutional change with a comparative approach to data collection and research. To do so, the project leverages the unique conditions created by a referendum and its impact on support for an oft-overlooked form of minority rights, indigenous rights. The referendum asks citizens to either adopt or reject a constitutional amendment formally recognizing indigenous rights and creating an indigenous advisory body. Using a public opinion survey fielded in the period immediately preceding and following the referendum, the project will yield insights into (a) the impacts of the referendum on public support for minority rights; (b) the extent to which such an effect is conditioned by pre-existing support for minority rights; and (c) the impact of the referendum’s outcome on the political attitudes and efficacy of minority citizens. In doing so, the project represents a unique examination of a constitutional referendum’s impact on political attitudes and an important expansion of the existing literature on public support for minority rights in general and Indigenous rights in particular. Moreover, the findings from this research will yield insights into the consequences of attempts at constitutional change for minority citizens’ attachment and trust in the political system.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.