Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science

理性选民的标准观点是，在那些对选民具有重要意义的意识形态或问题上，投票给立场与选民最接近的政党或候选人。近年来，一个高度复杂的研究机构探索了选民、候选人和政党的思想结构或“问题空间”，以及它们之间的联系。这项研究的一个重要成果是一系列理论表明，选举在选择最接近选民理想的候选人方面的成功在很大程度上受到所使用的选举制度类型的影响。然而，到目前为止，大多数关于空间理论的研究都集中在美国式的选举上，即只有两名候选人参加的多数选举。该奖项支持博士论文研究，旨在测试投票空间理论在多国选举中的有效性，例如美国的许多初选和地方无党派选举，以及其他国家的全国选举。当只有两名候选人竞争公职时，美国传统的单一成员选区和多元投票制度已被证明足以确保选举结果与选民问题信念之间的良好匹配。然而，在多国选举中，理论表明，单一成员选区的多数投票可能会产生不稳定的均衡。普遍的理论还表明，采用单一成员地区的多数规则或使用多成员地区的规则将解决这一问题。为了验证这些理论预测，该项目研究了智利的投票模式，智利是少数几个同时使用两个候选人和多个候选人选举的政治制度之一，因此提供了一个受控的环境，在其中隔离不同选举制度的影响。已经收集了关于智利选举的异常丰富的数据集，并将其提供给首席调查员，以促进这项研究。这项研究完成后，将加强我们对选民决定、选民与候选人之间的关系、以及替代选举制度对这些决定和关系的影响的了解。在这样做的过程中，这项研究将提供重要信息，有助于评估美国和其他地方选举制度的效力。

The standard view of the rational voter is one who votes for the party or candidate whose positions are closest to the voter's on those ideological or issue dimensions of importance to the voter. In recent years, a highly sophisticated body of research has explored the ideological structure or "issue space" of voters, candidates, and political parties and the linkages among them. An important outcome of this research is a body of theory suggesting that the success of elections in selecting candidates who are closest to the voters' ideal is heavily influenced by the type of electoral system used. To date, however, most research on spatial theory has concentrated on American style, plurality elections involving only two candidates. This award supports doctoral dissertation research designed to test the validity of spatial theories of voting in multicandidate elections such as many primary and local non-partisan elections in the United States, and the national elections in other countries. When only two candidates compete for office the traditional American system of single member districts and plurality voting has been shown to be sufficient to insure a good fit between election outcomes and voter issue beliefs. However, in multicandidate elections theory suggests that single member districts with plurality voting are likely to produce unstable equilibrium. Prevailing theory also suggests that adoption of majority rules with single member districts or the use of multimember districts with plurality rules will solve this problem. To test these theoretical predictions this project examines voting patterns in Chile, one of the few political systems which uses both two candidate and multicandidate elections concurrently and thus provides an controlled environment in which to isolate the effects of the different electoral systems. An unusually rich data set on Chilean elections already has been assembled and made available to the Principal Investigator to facilitate this research. When completed this research will enhance our understanding of voter decisions, the relationships between voters and candidates, and the effect on those decision and relationships of alternative electoral systems. In so doing this research will provide important information that will facilitate evaluations of the effectiveness of electoral systems in the United States and elsewhere.