Collaborative: Using Roll Call Votes to Understand Legislative Behavior

在大多数民主国家，国家和地方议会立法机构投票的公开记录是追究民选官员责任的重要依据。在政治学中，这些记录也是有关立法者和政党行为的重要数据来源。在实践中，许多立法机构只为个别立法者对所进行投票的一小部分问题的投票创建了一份公开记录。这些记录的选票往往不是所有选票的代表性样本，可能会显示出系统性的偏见，对政治问责和政治行为科学产生影响。因此，了解接受公开记录表决(唱名表决)的问题的特点对于我们理解民主进程和评估可从唱名表决数据中得出的科学推论的限度至关重要。这项研究将通过考察世界各地的国家议会机构来促进我们对投票记录的理解。目前在政治学中，来自不同政治动机的两种解释可以作为对进行记录投票的决定的争辩解释的基础：纪律论点和立场立场论点。这项研究(A)发展了关于这些叙述的含义的理论，并具体说明了关于投票涉及什么问题以及对立法者可观察到的投票模式的后果的可检验的命题；(B)审查政策领域和立法发起人中的政策领域和立法发起人受记录表决的影响；(C)审查制约接受记录或无记录表决的问题的正式规则和政治背景；以及(D)生成和估计统计模型，以说明预期结果对要求进行记录表决的决定的影响。通过这样做，这项研究提供了对唱名投票数据生成过程的更深层次的理解，这是迄今为止政治学所没有的，这反过来将使人们能够从观察到的投票行为中得出更有力的推论。这项研究是第一次系统地了解多个国家议会的唱名投票数据生成过程。这项研究将促进我们对民主陈述、问责制和响应性的理解。此外，它还将提供关于议会投票的大量数据，这对比较立法政治领域的学者来说将是重要的。最后，该项目将为研究生提供宝贵的研究经验。

In most democracies, the public record of legislative votes in national and local parliaments is an important basis for holding elected officials accountable. In political science, that record is also an important source of data on legislator and party behavior. In practice, many legislatures create a public record of the votes cast by individual legislators for only a fraction of the issues on which votes occur. These recorded votes often are not a representative sample of all votes cast and may exhibit systematic biases that have implications for political accountability and for the science of political behavior. Therefore, understanding the characteristics of the issues that receive a publicly recorded vote (a roll-call vote) is essential to our understanding of democratic processes and evaluating the limits of scientific inferences that can be drawn from roll-call data. This study will advance our understanding of the voting record through examination of national parliamentary bodies around the world.Currently in political science, two accounts, derived from alternative political motivations, serve as the basis of contending explanations of the decision to conduct a recorded vote: disciplining arguments and position-taking arguments. This study (a) develops theory about the implications of these accounts and specifies testable propositions about both what issues come to a vote and what are the consequences for legislators' observable voting patterns; (b) examines the policy domains and legislative sponsors in the full population of votes to the policy domains and legislative sponsors subject to recorded votes; (c) examines the formal rules and political context that condition the issues that receive a recorded or unrecorded vote; and (d) generates and estimates statistical models that account for the effect of expected outcomes on the decision to request a recorded vote. In doing so, the study provides a deeper understanding of the roll-call vote data generating process than political science has had to date, which, in turn, will allow stronger inferences to be drawn from observed voting behavior.This study is the first systematic effort to understand the roll-call vote data generating process for multiple national parliaments. The study will advance our understanding of democratic presentation, accountability, and responsiveness. In addition, it will provide a large corpus of data on parliamentary voting that will be important to scholars in the field of comparative legislative politics. Finally, the project will provide graduate students with invaluable research experience.