Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Legislators' Perceptions and Representation in Congress

政治学博士论文研究：眼不见心不烦：立法者的看法和国会代表

• 批准号: 0213959
• 负责人: Richard Hall
• 金额: $ 1.17万
• 依托单位: Regents of the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-08-01 至 2004-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0213959&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

Over twenty years ago, Fenno (1978) called attention to what he called the "key problem facing students of the representative-constituency relationship.. .the problem of perception." More specifically, Fenno noted the importance of viewing the constituency as the legislator does. In other words, "what does an elected representative see when he or she sees a constituency." (Fenno 1978). This Doctoral Dissertation Research project addresses this question and employs theories from cognitive and social psychology to develop a more complete theory of congressional representation. The project centers on the ways in which legislators' conceptions of their constituents are constrained by the availability heuristic (Tversky and Kahneman 1974). While political scientists have frequently invoked psychological theories in the study of public opinion, such theories have rarely been examined in the context of political elites. Part of the task of representation requires legislators to decide who in the district is interested in a given issue. The student argues that the availability heuristic offers important insight into legislators' perceptions of their districts. When making judgments about the interests of their district, legislators do not use all the relevant information, but rather rely on a subset of relevant information. Those interests (whether organized or unorganized) that are more easily accessible are more likely to be included in the legislator's perception of the district's interests on a given issue. In this dissertation the student examines selective perception and argues that the answer to this question requires the consideration of the availability heuristic. The central question investigated is what explains perceptual variations across legislators? The student offers that any answer to this question must take into account numerous hypotheses from the political science literature in combination with theories from cognitive psychology. It is this latter question that constitutes the majority of the empirical focus of this project.The student approaches the question of who legislators perceive as being part of the interested constituency on a given issue by focusing on current members of the U.S. House of Representatives and their legislative staff. Since the research is issue-specific, he focuses on two policies within each of two issue areas: the Patients' Bill of Rights and Medicare reform (health policy), and bankruptcy reform and the Internet tax moratorium (financial services policy). She uses in-person interviews with legislative staff and legislators to answer the question of how legislators see their constituents. The dependent variable of legislators' perceptions of who in their district is interested in a given issue is measured by two instruments included in the interviews with legislative staff and legislators. The combination of interviews and a dataset comprised of economic, political, and demographic variables allows both descriptive and qualitative analysis as well as a more conventional statistical analysis.

二十多年前，芬诺（Fenno，1978年）呼吁他注意他所谓的“代表性统计关系的学生面临的关键问题。感知问题”。更具体地说，芬诺指出了像立法者那样观看选区的重要性。换句话说，“当选的代表看到他或她看到选区的何时会看到什么。” （Fenno 1978）。这项博士学位论文研究项目解决了这个问题，并采用了认知和社会心理学的理论来开发更完整的国会代表理论。该项目集中在立法者对选民的观念受到启发性启发式限制的方式（Tversky and Kahneman 1974）。尽管政治科学家在舆论研究中经常援引心理理论，但这种理论很少在政治精英的背景下得到研究。代理的一部分任务要求立法者决定该地区谁对特定问题感兴趣。 该学生认为，可用性启发式启发式为立法者对他们所在地区的看法提供了重要的见解。在对其地区的利益做出判断时，立法者不使用所有相关信息，而是依靠一部分相关信息。更容易获得的这些利益（无论是有组织的还是无组织的）更有可能被包括在立法者对该地区对特定问题的利益的看法中。在本文中，学生研究了选择性的看法，并认为这个问题的答案需要考虑可用性启发式。调查的主要问题是什么解释了立法者的知觉差异？学生提出，对这个问题的任何答案都必须考虑到政治学文献中的众多假设以及认知心理学的理论。正是后一个问题构成了该项目的大部分经验重点。学生通过关注美国众议院众议院及其立法人员的现任成员来处理谁立法者认为是对给定问题的感兴趣选区的一部分的问题。由于这项研究是特定于发行的，因此他专注于两个问题领域的两个政策：患者的权利和医疗保险改革（卫生政策），破产改革和互联网税收暂停（金融服务政策）。她使用与立法人员和立法者的面对面访谈来回答立法者如何看待其选民的问题。立法者对他们所在地区对特定问题感兴趣的人的看法的因变量是由对立法人员和立法者的访谈中包括的两种工具来衡量的。访谈和由经济，政治和人口统计学变量组成的数据集的结合允许描述性和定性分析以及更传统的统计分析。