(Editors Mark Franklin and Christopher Wlezien; anticipated publication late 2002)
(Pergamon, in press) CLICK HERE TO SEE THE COVER AND BRIEF REVIEWS
Contributors:
Jake Bowers, University of Michigan
Henry Brady, University of California Berkeley
John Curtice, University of Strathclyde
Cees van der Eijk, University of Amsterdam
Robert Erikson, Columbia University
Mark Franklin, Trinity College Hartford and University of Amsterdam
Martin Johnson, University of California, Riverside
Richard Johnston, University of British Columbia
Kathleen Knight, Barnard University and Trinity College, Dublin
Michael Marsh, Trinity College, Dublin
W. Phillip Shively, University of Minnesota
Robert Stein, Rice University
Laura Stoker, University of California, Berkeley
Christopher Wlezien, Oxford University
John Zaller, UCLA
Theme:
Election studies have reached a critical point in their development. At a conference at the University of Houston, held in March/April 1999, at which PIs of election studies in Britain, Canada, Netherlands, and the USA -- together with PIs of the European Elections Studies and of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems -- met to discuss the conduct of election studies, it was discovered that election studies in all these countries (and presumably elsewhere) are facing similar problems. The problems are primarily intellectual. Election studies designed on the Michigan model are reaching the limit of what they can achieve. The research questions now on the agenda of those who study elections and voting do not lend themselves to being investigated by means of such studies. Some of the problems are already being addressed by adopting a comparative approach to electoral research, and the EES and CSES provide fruitful examples of what is possible along these lines. The meeting considered the nature of the new research questions facing electoral scholars, the extent to which conventional pre- and/or post-election studies are equipped to address these questions, and the ways in which such studies might be adapted to meet the challenges they face. The proceedings gave rise to committments to produce papers for a Special Issue of Electoral Studies (21:2) which are now being re-issued as part of an edited volume, as follows.
Format:
The symposium takes the form of a series of chapters of varying length (some as short as eight pages, none longer than about 30 pages) which lay out the problems and proposed solutions in the form of a quasi-dialog between contributors. This dialog does not reproduce the dialog that took place in Houston, but is more properly seen as a recapitulation, continuation and development of that dialog. Apart from the first two pieces (which set the scene, and in so doing recapitulate much of what was said at the Houston conference) the chapters all start from ideas broached at the conference but take those ideas further and develop their implications in a way that could not be done in Houston. Draft chapters were circulated among contributors so that all had the chance to comment on others' work, and all had the opportunity to respond to and/or develop the ideas in other chapters. The editors had a rough idea, based on proceedings of the final day of the conference and at the ensuing Round Table in San Antonio, of how the dialog would unfold; but one of the very exciting things about this symposium is that it consists largely of fresh (or freshly elaborated) ideas. It is thus not a conventional symposium consisting of papers that were taken to a conference, but a quite unique symposium of ideas developed from a conference.
Contents
Preface
Christopher Wlezien and Mark N. Franklin
Broad Perspectives
John Curtice, "The State of Election Studies: Mid-Life
Crisis or New Youth?"
Kathleen Knight and Michael Marsh, "Varieties of Election
Studies"
Cees van der Eijk, "Design Issues in Electoral Research:
Taking Card of (Core) Business"
Addressing Space
Michael Marsh, "Electoral Context"
W. Phillips Shiveley, Robert Stein and Martin Johnson,
"Contextual Data and the Study of
Elections and Voting Behavior: Connecting Individuals to
Environments"
Laura Stoker and Jake Bowers, " Designing Multi-Level
Studies: Sampling Voters and Electoral Contexts"
Addressing Time
Robert S. Erikson, "National Election Studies and Macro
Analysis"
Richard Johnston and Henry Brady, "The Rolling Cross-Section
Design"
John Zaller, "The Statistical Power of Election Studies to
Detect Media Exposure Effects in Political Campaigns"
Concluding Remarks
Mark N. Franklin and Christopher Wlezien, "Reinventing
Election Studies"
Back to Mark Franklin's home page
Back to European Election Studies Home Page