Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Extension of Suffrage as Policy Innovation: A Comparative Study of the American States

这篇博士论文提供了一个联邦制度下选举权延伸的解释。最终的问题是：一个之前被排除在外的群体如何才能成功地游说获得选举权？虽然其他学者将争取选举权的群众行动主义的行为解释和政策制定的制度解释视为独立的努力，但首席研究员认为，这两者之间的联系过于紧密，无法独立理解。理解政治整合运动何时以及如何成功，需要理解行动主义和制度约束的过程是如何相互作用的。该项目将明确地努力将试图解释行动主义发展和维持的社会运动文献中的理论框架与试图解释政策制定过程（例如，政党，立法机构和政策创新）的政治学文献中的理论框架结合起来，为选举权的过程提供一个新的和更完整的解释。为了回答这个关于美国政治制度的基本问题，首席调查员研究了争取妇女选举权的斗争。各州通过立法、制宪会议和全民公决来考虑和采纳妇女选举权措施。这些措施中有些只规定了总统选举权，有些只规定了初选选举权，有些规定了全部选举权。从最早到最近的州一级采纳妇女选举权之间，过去了30年。正是通过对这种差异的调查，我们才能发现使以前被排斥的群体或多或少有可能扩大选举参与权的制度和社会政治因素。研究设计结合了事件历史方法来分析所有48个州的情况，并对妇女选举权的考虑进行了深入的档案研究（在六个州的样本中）。这项全国数据分析将各州采用妇女选举权的时间作为社会和制度条件的函数进行建模，包括：党派竞争、第三党选举实力、人口的种族和性别构成、经济条件、妇女选举权利益组织以及州倡议和宪法修正案过程的难度。档案工作是在根据这些条件的不同而明确选择的州进行的。这使得首席调查员能够追踪这些因素在被剥夺公民权的群体争取政治包容的斗争中发挥作用的过程。

This Doctoral Dissertation provides an explanation of the extension of suffrage rights in a federal system. The ultimate question is: what does it take for a previously excluded group to successfully lobby for the right of electoral inclusion? While other scholars have treated the behavioral explanation of mass activism for suffrage rights and the institutional explanation of policy enactment as separate endeavors, the Principal Investigator argues that the two are too highly interconnected to be understood independently. Understanding when and how movements for political incorporation succeed requires understanding how the processes of activism and institutional constraints interact. The project will explicitly endeavor to combine theoretical frameworks from the literature on social movements that seek to explain the development and maintenance of activism, with the literatures in political science that seek to explain processes of policy enactment (e.g., political parties, legislative institutions, and policy innovation) to offer a new and more complete explanation of the process of enfranchisement. To answer this fundamental question about the American political system, the Principal Investigator studies the struggle for adoption of woman suffrage. Woman suffrage measures were considered and adopted by states through legislative enactment, constitutional convention, and popular referendum. Some of these measures provided for only presidential suffrage, some only primary suffrage, some full suffrage. Thirty years passed between the earliest and latest state-level adopters of woman suffrage. It is through investigation of this variance that we can discover the institutional and socio-political factors that make expansion of the right of electoral participation more or less possible for previously excluded groups. The research design combines an event history approach to analysis of in all forty-eight states with in-depth archival research on the consideration of woman suffrage (in a sample of six states). The national data analysis models the time to adoption of woman suffrage in the states as a function of social and institutional conditions, including: partisan competition, electoral strength of third parties, racial and sex composition of the population, economic conditions, organization of woman suffrage interests, and the difficulty of the state initiative and constitutional amendment processes. The archival work is conducted in states chosen explicitly for their variance on these conditions. This allows the Principal Investigator the ability to trace the processes through which each of these factors comes to matter in the struggle by disenfranchised groups for their political inclusion.