EITM: Collaborative Research on Legislative Party Switching: Integrating Formal and Comparative Empirical Analyses

EITM：立法政党转换的合作研究：整合形式分析和比较实证分析

• 批准号: 0339877
• 负责人: Carol Mershon
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Virginia Main Campus
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-05-01 至 2007-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0339877&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: EITM; Collaborative; Research; Legislative; Party

Party switching in legislatures is important. Recent US history drives home the point. WhenSenator Jeffords left the Republican Party in 2002 to serve in the Senate as an independent, hefundamentally altered the policy-making landscape. In leaving the Republican Party and handingcontrol of the Senate to the Democrats, Jeffords transformed a unified government into a dividedgovernment. The change in partisan control of the Senate changed policy making and outcomes. His action thus demonstrated the importance of political parties, even in the United States where the two major parties often are seen as weak and essentially indistinguishable from one another.Intellectual merit. Political scientists of all stripes agree that parties are essential to representative democracy. Parties organize legislatures, articulate choices, aggregate preferences, and, above all, provide labels under which candidates vie for public office. Scholars commonly examine such issues as the value of party labels or party discipline for voters' decision making, but rarely ask how these affect legislators' choices. Students of US politics debate the degree to which parties condition legislators' voting, for example, but few have trained either empirical or theoretical attention on such other aspects of legislative behavior as the choice of party affiliation. Only a few formal models focus on politicians' party switching. A more extensive but still limited empirical literature, most of it divorced from formal research, examines legislators' moves among parties. This project investigates the causes and consequences of party switching. It seeks to answer suchquestions as Why would a legislator decide to change party affiliation? Under what conditions would a party choose to accept a defector from another party? Most broadly, what are the effects of party switching? Answers to these questions will both illuminate party switching and advance our understanding of parties, party discipline, and party systems. They also will advance understanding of how interdependent, individual decisions interact to create a social dynamic. To pursue this agenda, the project integrates formal and empirical approaches to the study of politicians' choices of, and changes in, party affiliation. The co-Principal Investigators will build a formal model of party switching, specify the model's testable hypotheses, develop a research design for empirical evaluation of those hypotheses, and conduct empirical tests of the model in selected national settings. Their plans are animated by the conviction that the key to fostering scientific progress in this area (and others) is to bridge the chasm between formal and empirical analyses. Plan of the work. The co-PIs have successfully recruited ten prominent political scientists inorder to establish a Research Work Group on Party Switching. Group members will propose anddiscuss refinements or alternatives to the co-PIs' model, hypotheses, and research design. They also will assess the empirical plausibility of the model, examining evidence from a wide range of settings, including Brazil, Eastern Europe, Russia, Italy, Spain, the European Parliament, the United States, and Japan. The Work Group will meet twice, in summer 2004 and summer 2005. The co-PIs will make publicly available the Group's datasets on the party affiliations of legislators and candidates as well as seek to arrange publication of the Group's papers in a special issue of a refereed journal. Broader impacts. The co-PIs and the Group will contribute to: (1) the dissemination of scholarlyresults (via publication of journal articles and sharing of databases); (2) the enhancement of research infrastructure (via scholarly collaboration across national boundaries); (3) the teaching and training of graduate students (discussion with graduate students will be an integral part of the Group's meetings); and (4) the broadening of participation of underrepresented groups (women constitute one-third of the Research Work Group). We have no plans directly to undertake undergraduate curriculum development as part of this project, but we believe it can and should have (5) substantial indirect impact on undergraduate education. For example, the flurry of media attention to the causes and consequences of Jeffords's move made it clear that party switching is a puzzle. This project should help scholars better understand party switching as a general phenomenon. They then can better teach their students why, when, and how choices of party affiliation and, by implication, parties matter.

立法机关转换政党很重要。美国最近的历史使重点归还了重点。当杰诺德斯（Jeffords）于2002年离开共和党，在参议院任职，作为一个独立人士，赫芬德（Hefundain）大大改变了制定景观。在离开共和党和将参议院的控制权交给民主党时，杰福德将统一的政府转变为分裂的政府。党派控制参议院的变化改变了政策制定和成果。因此，他的行动表明了政党的重要性，即使在美国，两个主要政党通常被视为弱者，本质上是无法区分的。各个条纹的政治学家都同意，当事方对于代表民主至关重要。当事方组织了立法机关，表达选择，偏好的总体偏好，最重要的是，候选人竞选公职的标签。学者通常会检查诸如党派标签或政党纪律对选民决策的价值，但很少问这些问题如何影响立法者的选择。例如，美国政治的学生辩论当事方在政党进行投票的条件程度，但很少有人对立法行为的其他方面的经验或理论上的关注，例如选择政党隶属关系。只有少数正式模型专注于政治家的政党转换。更广泛但仍然有限的经验文献，其中大多数与正式研究离婚，研究了立法者之间的行动。 该项目调查了政党转换的原因和后果。它试图回答为什么立法者决定改变政党隶属关系的问题？在什么条件下，一方会选择接受另一方的叛逃者？最广泛地说，政党转换有什么影响？这些问题的答案既可以阐明政党的转换，又可以提高我们对政党，政党纪律和党派制度的理解。他们还将促进对相互依存的个人决策如何相互作用以创造社会动态的理解。为了遵循这一议程，该项目将正式和经验的方法融入了对政治家选择和变化政党隶属关系的研究。联合主持的研究人员将建立一个正式的政党转换模型，指定模型的可测试假设，为这些假设的经验评估开发研究设计，并在选定的国家环境中对模型进行经验测试。他们的计划使他们的计划充满了信念，即促进该领域（以及其他领域）的科学进步的关键是弥合正式和经验分析之间的鸿沟。 工作计划。该副作用已成功招募了十位官员中的著名政治学家，以建立一个有关党派转换的研究工作组。小组成员将提出副案例模型，假设和研究设计的替代品或替代方案。他们还将评估该模型的经验合理性，并检查包括巴西，东欧，俄罗斯，意大利，西班牙，欧洲议会，美国和日本在内的各种环境中的证据。该工作组将在2004年夏季和2005年夏季两次见面。该副作用将使该集团在立法者和候选人的党派分支机构上公开可用，并寻求在一本被调查期刊的特刊中安排该小组论文的出版。 更广泛的影响。 Co-Pis和该小组将为：（1）传播学术归因（通过发表期刊文章和数据库共享）； （2）增强研究基础设施（通过跨民族边界的学术合作）； （3）研究生的教学和培训（与研究生讨论将是该小组会议不可或缺的一部分）； （4）扩大代表性不足的群体的参与（妇女构成研究工作组的三分之一）。我们没有直接计划作为该项目的一部分进行本科课程发展的计划，但我们认为它可以而且应该具有（5）对本科教育的大大间接影响。例如，媒体对杰福德（Jeffords）举动的原因和后果的关注表明，党派切换是一个难题。该项目应该帮助学者更好地理解政党的转变为一般现象。然后，他们可以更好地教导学生为什么，何时以及党派的选择以及有暗示的党派选择。