The American Founding: Motivations of the Framers at the Constitutional Convention

上个世纪以来，学者们一直在争论制宪会议上制宪者的动机。一些人辩称，代表投票是根据他们的个人经济利益，而另一些人则认为，代表投票是根据国家利益或政治意识形态。该项目从三个重要方面扩展了目前对制宪会议的理解。首先，它通过从以前无法获得的州唱名投票和手稿记录来推断代表投票模式，从而增加了可用意见的数量。其次，它允许更精确地检验关于代表动机的各种假设，包括比尔德的论文、关于意识形态的理论和理性自利理论。第三，它分析了可能影响代表投票行为的选民利益的类型：州立法者的利益(他们选出了参加大会的代表)，一个州公民的利益(据称代表代表所代表的人)，以及居住在代表所在县的人的利益(他们可能会选举代表担任未来的职位)。研究结果对政治学、经济学和法学研究具有重要意义。

For the last century, scholars have debated the motivation of the framers at the constitutional convention. Some have argued that the delegates voted according to their personal economic interests, while others have argued that the delegates voted according to national interests or political ideologies. The project extends current understandings of the constitutional convention in three important ways. First, it increases the number of usable observations by inferring delegate voting patterns from the records of state roll call votes and manuscripts that were previously unavailable. Second, it allows for more precise testing of various hypotheses concerning delegate motivation, including Beard's thesis, theories about ideology, and theories of rational self-interest. Third, it analyzes the type of constituent interests that may have affected delegates' voting behavior: the interests of state legislators (who elected delegates to the convention), the interests of citizens within a state (who the delegates allegedly represented), and the interests of people living in the delegate's county (who might elect delegates to future posts). The results have important implications for political science, economics, and the study of the law.