Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

立法者当选的方式对民主理论有影响。现代政治学将代表权等同于政策反应。但是，如果在当代的代表与选民的关系中，服务的响应性在很大程度上显得若隐若现，也许立法者所做的和选民想要的大部分都不是代表。当个别立法者几乎没有动机将服务响应服从于更大的目标时，就很难实现连贯的国家政策。从分配政治责任的角度来看，问题在于产生连贯政策决定的能力下降。出于偶然或有意，存在着代表性的权衡。如果对普通公民个人需求的回应增加了，那么政党的回应以及集体的代表就会减弱。关于立法者维持或增加其选民支持的方式的研究经常相互矛盾，并导致不同的结论。本文献的主要限制是，大多数（如果不是全部的话）关于额外收入的数据是高度汇总的，而且地区一级的数据通常不可用。在这项调查中，研究人员解决了这些问题，并利用对实际选民成员接触数据的访问来观察和记录两组受访者，一组有候选人接触，另一组没有。数据来自于在一个选定的立法区进行的1100次电话采访。本研究探讨立法特权对选民评价（即现任者声誉和选民信任）以及投票决定的影响。它侧重于一项特殊的津贴，即监察员服务，即向个人提供援助，以解决与联邦机构的问题。使用联立方程模型，假设测试将揭示立法者使用津贴来鼓励和执行个案工作如何影响选民评估和投票决定。结果将阐明选民对在职者行为的反应。由此产生的对当代代表-成分关系和“负责任的政党”政府模式的影响也将被处理。

The manner in which legislators gain office has implications for democratic theory. Modern political science equates representation with policy responsiveness. But if service responsiveness looms largely in the contemporary representative-constituent relationship, perhaps much of what legislators do and constituents want is not representation. Coherent national policy can be difficult to achieve when individual legislators have little incentive to subordinate service responsiveness to a larger end. The problem, from the standpoint of assigning political responsibility, is the reduced ability to produce coherent policy decisions. By accident or intent, representational trade-offs exist. If responsiveness to the individual needs of the ordinary citizen waxes, party responsiveness, as well as the representation of the collectivity wanes. Studies concerning the ways in which legislators sustain or increase their constituent support have often contradicted one another and have resulted in differing conclusions. The major limitation of this literature is that most, if not all, of the data on perquisites are highly aggregated, and district level data are often unavailable.. In this investigation the researcher addresses these problems, and takes advantage of access to data on actual constituent-member contacts to observe and record two groups of respondents, one that had candidate contact and one that has not. Data are from 1,100 telephone interviews in a selected legislative district. The study probes the impact of legislative perquisites on constituent evaluations (i.e., incumbent reputation and constituent trust) as well as voting decisions. It focuses on a particular perquisite, ombudsmen service as the provision of assistance to individuals to resolve a problem with a federal agency. Using simulatneous equation modeling, hypotheses tested will reveal how legislators' use of perquisites to encourage and perform casework affect constituent evaluations and voting decisions. Results will illuminate how constituents respond to incumbent behavior. The resulting effects on contemporary representative-constituent relationships and the "repsonsible parties" model of government will also be addressed.