Public Opinion and Policy Responsiveness in Small Electorates: Institutions and Spending in American School Districts

小选民中的舆论和政策反应：美国学区的机构和支出

• 批准号: 0350541
• 负责人: Eric Plutzer
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Pennsylvania State Univ University Park
• 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: 2004-01-01 至 2007-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0350541&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Public; Opinion; Policy; Responsiveness; Small

Assessing policy responsiveness, the degree to which public policies correspond to citizen preferences, is a central challenge to political scientists. However, one aspect of policy responsiveness -- whether policy responsiveness is enhanced or diminished by various institutional arrangements -- remains largely unexplored. The researchers address this by focusing on spending outcomes in America's school districts. More specifically, they examine how much actual spending levels correspond to local preferences (after controlling for economic resources). Because school districts display enormous variation in several key institutions and their governance arrangements were specifically intended to enhance or diminish policy responsiveness, school districts represent an ideal unit of analysis to pursue these theoretical questions. The researchers examine how the correspondence between local educational spending levels and citizen preferences varies by three aspects of institutional design: fiscal independence, referendum requirements, and rules of electoral representation. Using data on over 9000 US school districts they show that reforms resulting from Civil Rights challenges to electoral systems were successful in improving the policy responsiveness of districts with even small minority populations. In addition, they show that one innovation championed by the Progressives -- fiscal independence-- lessens policy responsiveness while another such reform -- the referendum -- strengthens the opinion-policy linkage. To explore these substantive themes, they use Bayesian hierarchical models to estimate public opinion for various voter types within each state. These estimates are combined using demographically based post-stratification weights to estimate public opinion in each school district. The research support is for (1) refining and validating the estimation method, (2) applying the new measure to empirical questions on policy responsiveness, (3) adding a dynamic aspect to the analysis, and (4) generalizing the method to partisanship, ideology and other policies. In this stage, the broader value of the research is its contribution to several literatures by addressing important and unresolved questions. The analysis of fiscal independence contributes to a better understanding of American political development and the intention of Progressives to insulate educational policy making from the public. The analysis of the referendum will contribute to a growing empirical literature on direct democracy. In particular, it is possible to test certain aspects of the median voter model used in these studies because the investigators have actual estimates of the median voter's preferences. The analysis of electoral systems will add substantially to literature on racial politics and vote dilution. Prior studies show that the shift from at-large to ward-based electoral systems increased the descriptive representation of African Americans (and Hispanics, in Texas). The investigators go further by seeing whether these gains also led to increases substantive representation and n policy responsiveness.

评估政策响应能力，公共政策与公民偏好相对应的程度是政治科学家的核心挑战。 但是，政策响应能力的一个方面 - 无论是通过各种机构安排增强还是减少政策响应能力），在很大程度上没有探索。 研究人员通过专注于美国学区的支出成果来解决这一问题。 更具体地说，他们检查了多少实际支出水平与本地偏好相对应（在控制经济资源之后）。 由于学区在几个关键机构中表现出巨大的差异，其治理安排专门旨在增强或降低政策响应能力，因此学区代表了提出这些理论问题的理想分析单位。研究人员研究了当地教育支出水平与公民偏好之间的对应关系如何随机构设计的三个方面而变化：财政独立性，全民投票要求和选举代表规则。 他们使用有关9000多个美国学区的数据表明，针对选举制度的民权挑战所进行的改革成功地改善了少数少数族裔的地区的政策响应能力。 此外，他们表明，一项由进步主义者倡导的创新 - 财政独立性 - 降低了政策响应能力，而另一种改革（全民投票）加强了人们的意见 - 政策联系。 为了探索这些实质性主题，他们使用贝叶斯分层模型来估计每个州内各种选民类型的公众舆论。 这些估计是使用基于人口统计学的后分层权重结合的，以估算每个学区的公众舆论。 研究支持是（1）完善和验证估计方法，（2）将新措施应用于政策响应能力的经验问题，（3）在分析中添加动态方面，以及（4）将方法推广到党派，意识形态和其他政策。在此阶段，该研究的更广泛的价值是它通过解决重要和尚未解决的问题来对几种文献做出贡献。 财政独立性的分析有助于更好地理解美国的政治发展，并有助于进步主义者将教育政策从公众中脱颖而出。 全民公决的分析将有助于越来越多的关于直接民主的经验文献。 特别是，可以测试这些研究中中位选民模型的某些方面，因为研究人员对中位选民的偏好有实际估计。 选举制度的分析将大大增加有关种族政治和投票稀释的文献。 先前的研究表明，从一般到基于病房的选举制度的转变增加了非洲裔美国人（以及德克萨斯州西班牙裔）的描述性代表。 研究人员通过查看这些收益是否还会导致实质性代表和N政策响应能力的进一步发展。