17.871Spring 2003Group ProjectsAssignment summaryWorking with your assigned group, answer the question posed to you. You will give a 15-minute presentation (with 5 minutes available for questions) on your work on March 6. Yourgroup will also turn in a seven-page written report on your project on Monday, March 10. (Please submit a hard copy and then e-mail Steve and me an electronic version.) The reportshould be in the form of a (mini) term paper. It should describe how you measured the variablesof interest to you, report where you gathered the data, and summarize your findings using theappropriate figures and tables. (The seven-page limit includes tables and figures.)Statement about CollaborationYou are encouraged to seek and extend as much help as you can, both within and betweengroups.GradingI will assign a letter grade to each group’s project. That will be the grade you receive, plus orminus an adjustment that will be determined as follows: I will ask each member of the group toindicate the relative amount of effort each person contributed to the successful completion of theproject. If someone in the group stands out as being a conspicuous over- or under-contributor tothe group effort, that person’s letter will be adjusted upward or downward as appropriate.2Project 1: Electoral System and Quality of RepresentationGroup: Burrows, Chowdhury, Khilani, NesmithBackground. Democratic countries the world over employ a wide variety of electoral systems. Citizens of democratic countries vary in how responsive they believe their leaders are totheir desires. A natural question arises about whether some electoral systems are betterthan others in transmitting the voices of citizens to the ears of elected officials. Thisquestion is intrinsically interesting, but it has practical implications, since reformers theworld over often try to change the local electoral system in order to make it more"responsive" to the people. In particular, it is commonly believed that systems that havemore parties from which to choose and that employ some form of proportionalrepresentation are more responsive to citizen demands.Question. Do citizens from countries with more political parties and that employ proportionalrepresentation in their legislative elections feel that their voices are heard more thancitizens from countries with few parties and that employ plurality voting for legislatures?Possible explanationsMulti-partyism. The more parties a country has, the more they are able to populate thefull array of possible issue positions. This gives voters more of a reason tobelieve their voices are heard in the parliament.Proportional representation. Proportional representation (PR) systems allocate seats inthe legislature in proportion to the votes received throughout a geographic region,in contract to plurality systems, which allocate seats on a "winner take all" basis. Under this system, minority views are presumed to be more likely to berepresented in the legislature.Individual demographics. Certain types of people may be happier with governinginstitutions than others, despite the electoral system. Sometimes this will be afunction of local political factors. For instance, wealthy people in a countrycontrolled by the Socialist Party may be less likely to believe the parliament is"fair" than working-class people.Data sourcesComparative Study of Electoral Systems. This is a cross-national, collaborative surveythat asked an identical battery of questions to citizens in several dozen countries. It is available through its own web site (http://www.umich.edu/~cses/) and theHarvard-MIT Data Center. You will also discover that there are individualreports that document the political and partisan context of each country includedin the project.3Bibliographic sourceChristopher J. Anderson and Christine A. Guillory. 1997. “Political Institutions andSatisfaction with Democracy: A Cross-National Analysis of Consensus andMajoritarian Systems.” American Political Science Review 91: 66–81.CommentsThis project will involve the use of a large, unwieldy data set (the CSES), merging it withinformation gathered from other data sources. You thing you will want to meditate on while youdo this project is whether the questions asked in the different countries actually mean the samething, across different languages and cultures.4Project 2: Ban on Bilingual Education in MassachusettsGroup: Bronder, DeReitzes, Landino, WargoBackground: Massachusetts voters approved an initiative petition in November 2002 (Question2) banning bilingual education in the state. This was part of a nationwide movement,spearheaded by Ron Unz, a California entrepreneur, who has used his fortunes tobankroll these initiatives in states across the nation. This movement is important for atleast two reasons. First, it is having consequences for how immigrants are taught inAmerica’s public schools. Second, it is an important indicator of the state of racialpolitics in the United States.Question: What explains support for the “English-only” movement in Massachusetts, asindicated by support for Question 2 in 2002?Possible explanationsFiscal stress. Bilingual education is presumably more expensive than the “Englishimmersion” programs advocated by Unz and his followers. Communities that arefinancially distressed may be more likely to support Question 2, viewing it as away to save money.Ethnic politics. Recent immigrants obviously have an interest in this question. It is safeto say that most recent immigrants and non-native-English-speakers favorbilingual education and oppose English immersion. However, they may not bevoters. One longstanding theme of interracial politics is that proximity oftenbreeds tension and resentment. Therefore, communities with lots of recentimmigrants may be more opposed to bilingual education than those without lotsof recent immigrants.Ideology and partisanship. Liberals tend to identify more with recent immigrants andnon-English speakers, as do Democrats, who have historically regarded recentimmigrants as a core part of their coalition. Therefore, conservative andRepublican communities should have been more likely to support Question *.Data sourcesMassachusetts Electoral Statistics (P.D. 43). Published every two years. It is unlikelythe volume for the 2002 election will be published in time for this project, sovisit...Massachusetts Election Division. Part of the Secretary of