Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Vote Choice and Representation in Challenging Electoral Environments

世界各地数以亿计的选民选择代表的制度允许他们从数十或数百名候选人和数十个政党中进行选择。政治学、心理学和消费者选择方面的研究突出了大量选择对我们做出令人满意的选择的能力的有害影响。这项研究旨在将研究结果推广到选举领域，并开发和测试一种关于代表权和选民选择代表能力之间权衡的新理论。选举制度的学者和设计者经常寻求通过增加每个选区的席位、降低进入门槛和建立鼓励个人化竞选的机构来提高候选人池的代表性。然而，如果这些机构成功地增加了向选民提供的选择的数量，它们也可能对选民作出令人满意的选择的能力、代表和问责的质量以及民主稳定产生不利影响。选择范围过大可能会阻碍选民做出满意的选择，降低他们的政治效能感，并导致他们对民主制度感到不满。在作为重要信息来源的政党是候选人质量的微弱和不太有效的信号的系统中，这些问题可能会变得更加复杂。这个项目将测试选民选择集的大小与他们做出满意选择的能力和意愿、他们对自己的选择的满意度以及他们对民主的支持之间的关系。它还将测试政党缓解大量选择集的影响的能力，即使在政党较弱和个人主义竞选的民主制度中也是如此。这一关于选票选择的理论将通过在巴西两个城市进行的一系列实验进行测试：圣保罗和累西腓。这些实验将改进现有的关于正确投票的工作，将其排除在美国选举之外，并测试选举机构与选民做出满意选择的能力之间的因果关系。更好地理解选民在选举中做出的选择与选民做出满意选择的能力之间的关系，将对新民主国家的代表质量和稳定性产生深远的影响。选举机构、政治活动和媒体对选举的报道可能需要更好地设计，为选民提供更易管理的选择集。此外，这一项目的结果将进一步说明投资加强政党的价值，以此作为提高代表性和选民政治效力的手段。

Hundreds of millions of voters around the world select representatives in systems which allow them to choose from dozens or hundreds of candidates and dozens of political parties. Work in political science, psychology, and consumer choice highlights the pernicious effects of large choice sets on our ability to make satisfactory choices. This study seeks to expetnd the findings to the electoral arena and develop and test a new theory about the trade-off between representation and the ability of voters to select representatives. Scholars and designers of electoral systems often seek to improve the representativeness of the pool of candidates by increasing the number of seats in each district, lowering barriers to entry, and creating institutions that encourage personalistic campaigns. However, if these institutions succeed at increasing the number of options with which voters are presented, they may also have perverse effects on the ability of voters to make satisfactory choices, the quality of representation and accountability, and democratic stability. Excessively large choice sets may prevent voters from making satisfactory choices, decrease their feelings of political efficacy, and lead them to become dissatisfied with democratic institutions. These problems can be compounded in systems where political parties, an important source of information, are weak and less effective signals of candidate quality.This project will test for a relationship between the size of voters' choice sets and their ability and willingness to make satisfactory choices, their satisfaction with their choices, and their support for democracy. It will also test for the ability of political parties to mitigate some of the effects of large choice sets, even in democratic systems with weaker political parties and personalistic campaigns.This theroey about vote choice will be tested using a series of experiments conducted in two Brazilian cities: Sao Paulo and Recife. These experiments will improve on existent work on correct voting by expeanding it beyond U.S. elections and testing for a causal relationship between electoral institutions and the ability of voters to make satisfactory choices.Better understanding the relationship between the choices with which voters are presented in elections and the ability of voters to make satisfactory choices can have profound implications for the quality of representation and the stability of new democracies. Electoral institutions, political campaigns, and media coverage of elections may need to be better designed to provide voters with a more manageable choice set. Furthermore, the results from this project will shed more light on the value of investing in strengthening political parties as a means of improving representation and voters' poltiical efficacy.