Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Social Networks and Public Goods: How the Type of Network Affects the Pattern of Government Expenditures

摘要本文主要研究非民主国家社会群体表达利益和监督地方官员的非正式方式。与民主国家不同，专制国家缺乏公民参与政策制定过程的正式制度机制。然而，这并不意味着，正如一些理论家所假设的那样，这些公民缺乏表达的兴趣或途径。通过商业协会、环保非政府组织、俱乐部、民族语言或血统团体等社会团体，公民非正式地向当地官员表达自己的偏好。社会团体嵌入并包围着一个社区的成员，包括地方官员，并为适当的行为设定标准。这些社会团体允许接触地方官员，并提供监测和执行社区偏好的社会机制。虽然研究者认为，在某些情况下，这些非正式的社会团体可以作为正式利益表达渠道的替代品，但这些社会机构并不一定比正式机构更可取。事实上，这项研究旨在显示不同类型的社会群体如何影响不同的政策结果（即不同类型的支出决策），从一个群体获取国家资源到向整个社区提供高水平的公共产品。为了展示社会群体的特征如何影响政策结果，研究人员使用混合方法测试了一种类型学，该方法包括对40个国家25年来公共支出的时间序列统计分析和自然实验。构建一个自然实验，使用来自中国云南省三个不同州的地方政府统计数据和访谈，允许研究人员保持正式制度变量不变，并改变每种情况下流行的社会群体类型，以显示每个变量的效果和权重。这项研究更广泛的影响在于，它为学者们理解社会网络如何在非民主国家作为公民表达和问责的正式机制的替代品而运作创造了一个经验和理论的起点，而公民表达和问责是良好治理所必需的。

Primary Investigators: David A. Leblang and Jessica C. TeetsTitle: Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social Networks and Public Goods: How the Type of Network Affects the Pattern of Government Expenditures0720405AbstractThis research focuses on the informal ways in which social groups articulate interests and monitor local officials in non-democracies. Unlike democracies, autocracies lack formal institutional mechanisms for citizen participation in the policy process. However, this does not mean, as some theorists have assumed, that these citizens lack interests or avenues of articulation. Through social groups such as business associations, environmental protection NGOs, clubs, and ethno-linguistic or lineage groups, citizens informally articulate preferences to local officials. Social groups embed and encircle members of a community, including local officials, and serve to set standards of appropriate behavior. These social groups allow access to local officials, as well as make available social mechanisms of monitoring and enforcing community preferences. While the researcher argues that in some cases these informal social groups can serve as substitutes for formal channels of interest articulation, these social institutions are not necessarily preferable to formal institutions. In fact, this research seeks to show how different types of social groups influence varied policy outcomes (i.e., different types of spending decisions), ranging from the capture of state resources by one group to the provision of high levels of public goods to the whole community. To show how the characteristics of social groups influence policy outcomes, the researcher tests a typology using a mixed methods approach consisting of time-series statistical analysis of public spending in 40 countries over 25 years, and a natural experiment. Constructing a natural experiment, using local government statistics and interviews from three different prefectures in China's Yunnan province, allows the researcher to hold formal institutional variables constant and vary the type of social group prevalent in each case to show the effect and weighting of each variable. The broader impact of this research is that it creates an empirical and theoretical starting point for scholars to understand how social networks operate in non-democracies as a substitute for formal mechanisms of citizen expression and accountability, which are essential for good governance.