Collaborative Research: Studies of Spatial Reasoning in Politics

目标和智力优势：空间模型现在是选举竞争和民主代表研究的核心。通常，选民和候选人的政策偏好排列在一条数字线上，选民选择最接近自己的候选人。尽管这类模型无处不在，但我们对人们如何利用空间信息做出政治决策的经验知识相对较少。公民在多大程度上准确感知到自己与候选人之间的距离？在什么条件下，空间距离是选举选择的基础？有两个问题阻碍了对这些问题的实证研究。首先，我们倾向于在候选人采取平衡立场后才观察选民的选择。然而，空间模型告诉我们，候选人面临着采取中间选民立场的压力，让公民在其他理由上打破平局。这就产生了一个讽刺意味：政治越是出于空间考虑，就越难在民意调查中看到其影响。其次，研究人员通常依靠调查受访者来确定选民和候选人在问题空间中的立场。这导致了一个困惑：看起来公民使用了空间标准，而实际上他们出于其他原因将自己的政策立场投射到他们喜欢的候选人身上，或者他们被说服采用了他们喜欢的候选人的立场。因此，两个偏向相反的来源使得选民何时使用空间标准很难推断。调查实验可以克服这两个内生性问题。其核心思想是将候选人的位置置于实验控制之下。对于每个实验，研究人员描述了候选人在问题空间中的位置，并要求受访者在其中进行选择。这种方法使他们能够研究公民对各种候选人职位的反应。该方法还使研究人员能够操纵对决策的非空间影响，如候选人的政党背景。调查人员提供了许多具体的例子，并解释了该方法如何帮助他们推断政党背景、不确定性和选举结构三个因素对公民空间感知和选择的影响。首先，他详细介绍了在空间推理中检测党派偏见的基本实验设计。他还扩展了这个设计，以解决一个长期存在的难题：投射和/或说服在多大程度上支撑着党派偏见。其次，他提出了一些假设，即那些对自己的位置不确定或遇到模棱两可的候选人的受访者将如何做出空间选择。他还详细介绍了用来测试每一种假设的设计。第三，研究者提出假设并提出实验设计，以考察结构因素对空间推理的影响。它们包括两个方面的选择，现状的作用，以及制度约束对政策制定者的后果。这项研究还讨论了实验设计如何与该领域的其他辩论对话，包括关于弃权和定向投票的研究。更广泛的影响：这个项目从一个新的角度对选民的观点和候选人的战略之间的联系进行了审查。我们的实验解决了民主政治的核心问题：政党的声誉和角色、候选人模棱两可和可信承诺的影响，以及当候选人在多维与一维问题空间中采取立场时公民做出选择的方式。这一研究对民主的理论和实践都具有重要意义。该项目还推动了社会科学中形式方法和行为方法相结合的趋势。这是斯坦福大学社会科学研究所(IRIS)的一项倡议的一部分，目的是(1)将社会科学领域的研究人员聚集在一起，扩大随机实验的使用；(2)建立一个多大学工作组，将行为经济学原理转化为政治选择研究。该项目加强了教育。为此，研究人员将来自该项目的数据和方法纳入了一个新的社会科学实验模块，他们建议将该模块用于理论模型暑期项目的经验意义。

Objectives and Intellectual Merit: Spatial models are now central to research on electoral competition and democratic representation. Typically, the policy preferences of voters and candidates are arrayed on a number line, and voters choose the candidate closest to themselves. Despite the ubiquity of such models, we have relatively little empirical knowledge about how people use spatial information to make political decisions. To what extent do citizens accurately perceive the distance between themselves and candidates? Under what conditions do spatial distances underlie electoral choices?Two problems have impeded empirical research on these questions. First, we tend to observe the choices of voters only after candidates have adopted equilibrium positions. Spatial models tell us, though, that candidates face pressure to adopt the position of the median voter, leaving citizens to break the tie on other grounds. This creates an irony: the more spatial considerations drive politics, the harder it becomes to see their effects in public opinion surveys. Second, researchers typically rely on survey respondents to identify where voters and candidates stand in the issue space. This leads to a confound: it may appear that citizens applied the spatial criterion, when in fact they projected their own policy stance onto the candidate they liked for other reasons, or they were persuaded to adopt the position of their preferred candidate. Thus, two sources of bias, running in opposite directions, make it difficult to infer when voters use spatial criteria.Survey experiments can overcome these two problems of endogeneity. The core idea is to bring the location of candidates under experimental control. For each experiment, the researchers describe the locations of candidates in an issue space and ask respondents to choose among them. This approach permits them to study how citizens respond to a wide range of candidate positions. The method also enables the researchers to manipulate non-spatial influences on decision making, such as the party affiliation of the candidates.The investigator offers many concrete examples of this method and explains how it helps them infer the effects of three factors party affiliation, uncertainty, and the structure of elections on the spatial perceptions and choices of citizens. First, he details a basic experimental design for detecting partisan biases in spatial reasoning. He also extends the design to resolve a long-standing conundrum: the extent to which projection and/or persuasion underlay partisan bias. Second, he offers hypotheses about how respondents that are uncertain about their position or who encounter ambiguous candidates will make spatial choices. He also detail designs to test hypotheses about each. Third, the investigator offers hypotheses and presents experimental designs to investigate the impact of structural factors on spatial reasoning. They include choices in two dimensions, the role of the status quo, and the consequences of institutional constraints on policymakers. The research also discusses how the experimental design can speak to other debates in the field, including research on abstention and directional voting. Broader Impact: This project opens up for examination from a new angle the nexus between the views of voters and the strategies of candidates. Our experiments address questions central to democratic politics: the reputations and roles of political parties, the effects of candidate ambiguity and credible commitments, and the way citizens make choices when candidates take positions in multi-dimensional versus one-dimensional issue spaces. The research contributes to both the theory and practice of democracy. This project also advances the trend toward integrating formal and behavioral approaches in social science. This is part of an initiative by the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences (IRiSS) at Stanford to (1) bring together researchers from across the social sciences to extend the use of randomized experiments, and (2) establish a multi-university working group to translate principles of behavioral economics into the study of political choice. The project enhances education. To this end, the investigators incorporate data and methods from the project into a new module on Experimentation in the Social Sciences, which they propose for the Empirical Implications of Theoretical Models summer program.