Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Turning Majorities into Minorities-Heresthetical Rhetoric of Parliamentary Oppositions

议会民主制的反对党如何挑战多数联盟？为了扭转局势，成为赢家，立法政治上的失败者会做些什么？本研究项目使用议会民主国家的立法言论作为定量数据，以分析反对党试图操纵立法议程维度的方式，从而分裂多数联盟。研究者假设反对党有策略地使用言论，即他们选择解决可能有可能分裂大多数的问题。当与主导意识形态维度不高度相关的休眠问题变得更加突出时，当联盟成员（政党、派别、立法者）对这些问题的优先事项不同时，多数联盟分裂的可能性就会增加。该模型使用来自三个民主议会立法机构的语音数据进行了测试：英国、以色列和匈牙利。研究者将重点放在这些国家政治史上的重要时期——20世纪90年代中期的以色列-巴勒斯坦和平进程，保守党统治18年后托尼·布莱尔领导的工党在英国重新掌权的过程，以及匈牙利民主化之后的时代。因此，研究结果将有助于解释不同制度和历史轨迹下的立法动态，并将对各种议会民主国家产生影响。该分析将通过揭示议会活动的不发达文献，为立法民主政治的“黑箱”提供洞见：鉴于议会反对派在数量和制度上处于劣势，输家如何才能成为赢家？这个问题是我们理解民主制度的核心。此外，本研究还引入了一种新的方法来实施和衡量立法反对策略。最后，数据集，包括修辞数据和研究结果将成为进一步研究的可用数据。

How do opposition parties in Parliamentary democracies challenge the majority coalition? What do legislative political losers do in order to turn the tables and become winners? This research project uses legislative speech in parliamentary democracies as quantitative data, in order to analyze the ways in which opposition parties try to manipulate the dimensions of the legislative agenda, and thus split the majority coalition. The investigator assumes that opposition parties use speech strategically, i.e., they choose to address issues that might have high potential of splitting the majority. The probability of splitting the majority coalition increases when dormant issues that are not highly correlated with the dominant ideological dimension become more salient, and when the priorities of coalition members (parties, factions, legislators) with regard to these are diverse.This model is tested using speech data from three democratic parliamentary legislatures: The British, the Israeli, and the Hungarian. The investigator focuses on important periods in the political histories of these countries-the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the mid 1990's, the process leading to the return of the Labor party under Tony Blair to power in the UK after 18 years of Conservative rule, and the era following the democratization in Hungary. The findings will thus help explain legislative dynamics under different institutions and historical trajectories, and will have implications for a variety of parliamentary democracies.The analysis would offer insights into the "black box" of legislative democratic politics, by shedding light on an underdeveloped literature of parliamentary activity: given the fact that the parliamentary opposition is numerically and institutionally disadvantaged, what do the losers do to become winners? This question is central to our understanding of democratic institutions. In addition, the research introduces a novel methodology to operationalize and measure legislative opposition strategy. Finally, data sets, including the rhetorical data, and the findings will become available for further research.