Collaborative Research on Political Competition and Decentralization in Democracies

这个合作研究团队采用计算和数学模型来提高对分散政治系统的性质和性能的理解。该项目有两个主要目标。首先是更好地理解联邦政治体制中不同制度安排的利弊。更具体地说，调查人员研究了中央和地方政府之间不同程度的权力分享和协调的影响。方法论的目标是继续扩展和分析计算模型，作为政治科学和社会科学的方法论。在联邦制中，有几个层次的机构，包括中央政府的机构，指定中央政府和地方政府之间关系的机构，以及在地方一级决定政策的机构。该项目背后的基本思想是，当地方司法管辖区制定创新政策时，整个联邦系统（一个国家或一个像欧盟这样的国际组织）可以受益，但政策试验的激励机制并不独立于在全系统层面或地方层面建立的机构。研究人员仔细分析了包含类似于美国和欧盟两个联邦体系的机构的模型。

This collaborative research team employs computational and mathematical models to improve an understanding of the nature and performance of decentralized political systems. The project has two principal goals. The first is to understand better the advantages and disadvantages of different institutional arrangements in federal political systems. More specifically, the investigators study the effects of different degrees of power-sharing and coordination among central and local governments. The methodological goal is to continue extending and analyzing computational models as a methodology in political science and the social sciences in general. In federal systems, there are several layers of institutions, including those in the central government, those that specify relations between the central government and local governments, and those that decide policies at the local level. The basic idea behind the project is that a federal system as a whole (a country or an international organization like the European Union) can benefit when local jurisdictions develop innovative policies, yet incentives for policy experimentation are not independent of institutions set up at the system-wide level or at the local level. The researchers analyze closely models that incorporate institutions resembling those in two federal systems, the United States and the European Union.