Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness in Small Electorates: Institutions and Spending in American School Districts

评估政策响应性，即公共政策与公民偏好的对应程度，是政治学家面临的一个核心挑战。然而，政策响应性的一个方面--政策响应性是因各种体制安排而增强还是减弱--在很大程度上仍未得到探索。研究人员通过关注美国学区的支出结果来解决这个问题。更具体地说，他们考察了实际支出水平在多大程度上符合当地的偏好(在控制经济资源之后)。由于学区在几个关键机构中表现出巨大的差异，其治理安排专门旨在增强或削弱政策的响应性，学区是探讨这些理论问题的理想分析单位。研究人员考察了地方教育支出水平和公民偏好之间的对应关系如何因制度设计的三个方面而有所不同：财政独立、公投要求和选举代表规则。他们利用9000多个美国学区的数据表明，民权对选举制度的挑战导致的改革成功地改善了少数族裔人口较少的学区的政策响应性。此外，它们表明，进步派倡导的一项创新--财政独立--降低了政策的响应性，而另一项此类改革--全民公投--加强了意见与政策的联系。为了探索这些实质性的主题，他们使用贝叶斯分层模型来估计每个州内不同选民类型的民意。这些估计使用基于人口统计的后分层权重来组合，以估计每个学区的公众舆论。研究的支持是：(1)改进和验证估计方法；(2)将新的测量应用于政策响应性的实证问题；(3)增加分析的动态方面；(4)将该方法推广到党派、意识形态和其他政策。在这个阶段，这项研究的更广泛的价值在于它通过解决重要的和未解决的问题对几个文献做出了贡献。对财政独立的分析有助于更好地了解美国的政治发展和进步派将教育政策制定与公众隔绝的意图。对公投的分析将有助于不断增长的关于直接民主的实证文献。特别是，可以测试这些研究中使用的中位数选民模型的某些方面，因为调查人员对中位数选民的偏好有实际估计。对选举制度的分析将大大增加关于种族政治和选票稀释的文献。先前的研究表明，从普通选举制度向选区选举制度的转变增加了非裔美国人(以及德克萨斯州的拉美裔美国人)的描述性代表。调查人员更进一步，观察这些进展是否也导致实质性代表性和政策响应性的增加。

Assessing policy responsiveness, the degree to which public policies correspond to citizen preferences, is a central challenge to political scientists. However, one aspect of policy responsiveness -- whether policy responsiveness is enhanced or diminished by various institutional arrangements -- remains largely unexplored. The researchers address this by focusing on spending outcomes in America's school districts. More specifically, they examine how much actual spending levels correspond to local preferences (after controlling for economic resources). Because school districts display enormous variation in several key institutions and their governance arrangements were specifically intended to enhance or diminish policy responsiveness, school districts represent an ideal unit of analysis to pursue these theoretical questions. The researchers examine how the correspondence between local educational spending levels and citizen preferences varies by three aspects of institutional design: fiscal independence, referendum requirements, and rules of electoral representation. Using data on over 9000 US school districts they show that reforms resulting from Civil Rights challenges to electoral systems were successful in improving the policy responsiveness of districts with even small minority populations. In addition, they show that one innovation championed by the Progressives -- fiscal independence-- lessens policy responsiveness while another such reform -- the referendum -- strengthens the opinion-policy linkage. To explore these substantive themes, they use Bayesian hierarchical models to estimate public opinion for various voter types within each state. These estimates are combined using demographically based post-stratification weights to estimate public opinion in each school district. The research support is for (1) refining and validating the estimation method, (2) applying the new measure to empirical questions on policy responsiveness, (3) adding a dynamic aspect to the analysis, and (4) generalizing the method to partisanship, ideology and other policies. In this stage, the broader value of the research is its contribution to several literatures by addressing important and unresolved questions. The analysis of fiscal independence contributes to a better understanding of American political development and the intention of Progressives to insulate educational policy making from the public. The analysis of the referendum will contribute to a growing empirical literature on direct democracy. In particular, it is possible to test certain aspects of the median voter model used in these studies because the investigators have actual estimates of the median voter's preferences. The analysis of electoral systems will add substantially to literature on racial politics and vote dilution. Prior studies show that the shift from at-large to ward-based electoral systems increased the descriptive representation of African Americans (and Hispanics, in Texas). The investigators go further by seeing whether these gains also led to increases substantive representation and n policy responsiveness.