Conference: Building Collaborations in the Study of Polarization

Texas Tech University, Lubbock TX

Investigators

Abstract

Part 1: This conference will focus on ways to integrate mass-level theories of polarization with institutional theories of legislative behavior and organization. By facilitating collaboration between them this project aims to expand and refine existing theoretical approaches to assess how constituency-level factors affect polarization within the legislature, and how that, in turn, influences legislative behavior and outcomes. The project will integrate important changes in findings about the electorate into institutional theories of legislative politics and behavior. The conference will lead to a better understanding of the nature and consequences of legislative politics in an increasingly polarized world. The effort to integrate mass-level theories of polarization into institutional theories of legislative behavior holds the potential to account for the institutional implications arising from significant changes in constituency-based elements of partisanship. the participant list includes scholars from a range of institution types, ranging from non-PhD granting, teaching-focused institutions to highly selective private and flagship state PhD granting institutions. Additionally, half of the invitees are women. The PIs will seek to include graduate students, and potentially, undergraduate students in the research endeavor, by encouraging the invited participants to identify students whose research interests mesh with the project description. Part 2: This conference will focus on ways to integrate mass-level theories of polarization with institutional theories of legislative behavior and organization. By facilitating collaboration between them this project aims to expand and refine existing theoretical approaches to assess how constituency-level factors affect polarization within the legislature, and how that, in turn, influences legislative behavior and outcomes. The project will integrate important changes in findings about the electorate into institutional theories of legislative behavior. The conference will lead to a better understanding of the nature and consequences of legislative behavior in an increasingly polarized world. The effort to integrate mass-level theories of polarization into institutional theories of legislative behavior holds the potential to account for the institutional implications arising from significant changes in constituency-based elements of partisanship. the participant list includes scholars from a range of institution types, ranging from non-PhD granting, teaching-focused institutions to highly selective private and flagship state PhD granting institutions. Additionally, half of the invitees are women. The PIs will seek to include graduate students, and potentially, undergraduate students in the research endeavor, by encouraging the invited participants to identify students whose research interests mesh with the project description. Part 3: This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.