The Consequences of Party System Inflation

本项目研究政党制度膨胀的后果，即更多政党在国家一级竞争的程度。首先，研究人员研究了在国家级选举中有大量政党竞争对国家的经济和社会影响，特别是代表次国家地理区域的政党。其次，他们收集并存档了世界上许多民主国家在选区层面的选举结果。这两项任务都很有价值。前者增进了对具有特定政治制度特征的国家的后果的理解。后者使研究人员能够进行自己的研究，也使其他研究人员、记者和情报分析人员能够对其他国家的政治进行研究。最重要的是，研究人员调查了大量政党竞争是否会对该国人口产生重要影响。如果政党制度是分散的、地方化的，而不是集中的、国有化的，对公共利益和公共产品的提供是好是坏？有了这些知识，研究人员加强了我们对哪些制度特征会导致或多或少的政党的理解，而政党又会改善民主国家人民的生活。换句话说，通过将正式的政治制度与政党联系起来，然后与政策和政策结果联系起来，研究人员在理解制度设计的后果方面获得了杠杆作用，特别是对于新兴和发展中的民主国家。作为该项目的一部分，他们将收集和存档选区级的选举数据，以供更广泛的研究团体使用。他们还决定，为研究比较选举和政党，或为了研究政治、文化、经济、社会等其他领域而需要政党和政党制度资料的人，建立“选区级选举档案”（CLEA）。这个档案是一个独特的、有用的、可访问的来自世界上许多民主国家的选区级选举数据来源。这个项目有四种更广泛的影响。首先，研究结果告知政策制定者制度设计、政党制度特征和政策制定之间的重要因果关系。其次，研究人员通过CLEA档案广泛提供他们的数据。这使学者、政策分析家、外交官和情报分析家能够利用这些数据来研究政党制度特征的原因和后果，并为其他目的分析选举结果。第三，这个项目的数据收集部分涉及到与研究生和本科生的大量合作。

This project examines the consequences of party system inflation, which is the degree to which more political parties compete in national-level. First, the researchers study the economic and social consequences to countries of having a large number of political parties competing in national-level elections, especially parties that represent sub-national geographic areas. Second, they collect and archive election returns for many of the world's democracies at the electoral district level. Both tasks are valuable. The former enhances the understanding of the consequences for countries of specific political systems characteristics. The latter enable the researchers to conduct their own research and also enable other researchers, journalists, and intelligence analysts to conduct their research on the politics of other countries. Most centrally, the researchers investigate whether having a large number of political parties competing has important consequences for the country's population. Is it good or bad for the delivery of public benefits and public goods to the population if political party systems are fragmented and localized versus concentrated and nationalized? With this knowledge the researchers enhance our understanding of which institutional features lead to more or less political parties, which in turn can lead to improved lives for people in democracies. In other words, by linking formal political institutions to political parties and then to policies and the policy outcomes, researchers gain leverage in understanding the consequences of institutional design, especially for new and developing democracies.As part of this project, they will be gathering and archiving constituency-level election data for use by the broader research community. They will create the Constituency Level Election Archive (CLEA), a public archive that benefits those studying comparative elections and parties, or those needing data on parties and party systems to study other aspects of politics, culture, economics, and society. This archive is a unique, useful, accessible source of constituency-level election data from many of the world's democracies. This project has four kinds of broader impacts. First, findings from the study inform policy-makers about the important causal connections between institutional design, party system characteristics, and policy-making. Second, the researchers make their data widely available through the CLEA archive. This enables scholars, policy analysts, diplomats, and intelligence analysts to use the data to study the causes and consequences of party system characteristics, and to analyze election results for other purposes. Third, the data collection portion of this project involves a great deal of collaboration with graduate and undergraduate students.