Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Institutions or Culture or Both? A Comparative Study of Government Performance

为什么有些政府比其他政府表现得更好，几十年来一直是政治学的一个核心问题，但最近又有了争论的特征。一种观点认为，政府的外部变量——公民文化或社会资本——解释了绩效差异。另一种观点认为，社会资本和政府绩效之间充其量只有最小的联系，研究应该集中在制度分析和政府内生变量上。这个项目的目的是在政治科学学科中最持久的难题之一，实现目前相互竞争的解释之间的理论和解。这些相互矛盾的解释源于不同的研究传统和不同的政府绩效概念。因此，该项目有两个目标。首先是澄清政府绩效的概念，并通过在两个同等重要的维度上定义政府绩效，即行政效率和政策响应能力，来改进对政府绩效的衡量。第二个目标是解释两个维度上的差异，认为行政效率主要与内生或制度变量相关，而政策反应与外生或社会变量更密切相关。该项目采用定量和定性相结合的研究方法，数据来自两个联邦系统：美国和德国的地方政府。这样的案例选择有两个目的：1)它提供了一个足够大的案例样本，以便进行统计分析和揭示关系的一般模式；2)它允许对结果进行跨国核查，避免从单一国家背景的特点中得出一般结论的谬误。因此，分析级别是在系统内，结果是跨系统验证的。研究方法包括对现有数据的统计分析、收集原始数据的精英访谈以及对现有文献的分析。对常用的政府绩效指标数据进行因子分析，实证地确定政府绩效测度的维度。回归分析有助于确定与社会和体制变量之间关系的一般模式。这两类分析的数据来自美国人口普查局和德国城市协会的地方政府数据集、市政府调查、政府绩效项目和德国城市协会)、大规模调查（普特南的《独自打保龄球》数据集和德国社会调查），以及来自现有文件的编码，如美国城市的市政法规和德国地方政府宪法。定量分析还辅以对每个国家选定的四个城市的比较案例研究，以便验证结果并阐明各种社会和体制变量影响政府绩效不同方面的过程。这个项目的智力价值在于理论和实践。该项目改善了该学科中最持久的难题之一——政府绩效的决定因素。此外，它还促进了关于社会资本影响的日益激烈的学术辩论。最后，为了改善治理，必须准确衡量政府绩效，本项目将作为评估和改善具体政府绩效的指导工具。

Why some governments perform better than others has been a core question in political science for decades, but it has lately taken on debate characteristics. One line of argument holds that variables exogenous to government -civic culture or social capital-explain differential performance. Another line contends that there is, at best, a minimal link between social capital and government performance and that research should concentrate on institutional analyses and focus on variables endogenous to governments. This project intends to achieve theoretical reconciliation between currently competing explanations to one of the most enduring puzzles of the discipline of political science. These competing explanations arise from different research traditions and different conceptualizations of government performance. Therefore, the project has two objectives. The first is to clarify the concept and improve measurement of government performance by defining it on two equally important dimensions: administrative effectiveness and policy responsiveness. The second objective is to explain variance along both dimensions, arguing that administrative effectiveness is mainly associated with endogenous or institutional variables, and policy responsiveness is more closely associated with exogenous or societal variables. The project uses a combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods with data from local governments of two federal systems: the U.S. and Germany. Such a case selection serves two purposes: 1) it provides a sample of cases large enough in order to perform statistical analyses and reveal general patterns of relationships, 2) it allows for cross-national verification of the results avoiding the fallacy of deriving general conclusions from the idiosyncrasies of a single national context. Thus, the level of analysis is within system, the results are verified across systems. The research methods employed include statistical analysis of the available data, elite interviewing for gathering original data, as well as analysis of available documentation. Factor analysis of data on the commonly used indicators of government performance is used to empirically determine the dimensionality of the government performance measure. Regression analysis helps to determine the general patterns of relationships with societal and institutional variables. The data for these two types of analyses is compiled from the local government data sets of the U.S. Census Bureau and German Association of Cities, surveys of city governments, the Government Performance Project and German Association of Cities), mass surveys (Putnam's Bowling Alone dataset and German Social Survey) and coding from the available documentation, such as the municipal codes of the U.S. cities and from German local government constitutions. The quantitative analyses are complemented by comparative case studies of four selected cities from each country in order to validate the results and illuminate the processes by which the various societal and institutional variables influence different aspects of government performance. The project's intellectual merit is both theoretical and practical. The project refines one of the most enduring puzzles within the discipline - the determinants of government performance. In addition it contributes to the growing intellectual debate on the effects of social capital. Finally, in order to improve governance, it is necessary to accurately measure government performance and this project will serve as a guidance tool for assessing and improving the performance of specific governments.