Zoltan Hajnal at the University of California, San Diego, has just published an article in the American Political Science Review that looks at the issue of political representation. Democracy at its best is supposed to distribute victories and losses fairly evenly among the population. I may win on this given issue, my candidate may win in this particular election, but the next time I may lose. But because I know that I at least have the potential to win, I come back and fight another day.
For African Americans? Not so much. The abstract:
Critics have long feared that America’s winner-take-all electoral system would undermine the interests of minorities. Unfortunately, few available tests broadly assess how well minorities fare in a democracy. To gauge winners and losers in the American case, I introduce a new measure of representation. For any election, I count up how many voters from each demographic group vote for a candidate that loses. After comparing this new measure to its alternatives, I use data from the entire series of Voter News Service exit polls and a sample of mayoral elections to determine which kinds of voters end up losers. I find that across the range of American elections, African Americans are consistently more likely than other groups to end up losers, raising questions about equity in American democracy. The one exception to the pattern of black failure—congressional House elections—suggests ways to better incorporate minority interests.
This finding has all sorts of implications for elections, and for public policy. Cobb (Michael Bowen, not Dr. Jelani) argues that rights never generated wealth. This isn’t right at all. Coming with the right to choose winners and losers, among other things, is the indirect right to award contracts and to garner services. If that doesn’t lead to wealth, and health I don’t know what does. In the wake of news that political scientists don’t really bring much to the table in the way of policy prescriptions, it’s good to see research like this.
Lester:
Hajnal's developed an innovative tool to measure winners and losers and–not surprisingly given American history and their avg SES–African Americans do not fare well by it (so what else is new?!). But apart from that set of very real problems, the tool Hajnal has developed does not, I'm afraid, measure “representation” as he claims. Or I should say, it only measures a very simplistic conception of “representation.”
By Hajnal's own definition, it would appear that systems in which everyone voted for a winning candidate would be the “most” representative or the “best” case of representation. In single member districts we might follow Tom Brunell's proposal and pack like minded voters into, say, districts which were 80% of one party. Then you'd have a system in which many more people voted for winning candidates for sure.
Is that really better “representation?” Consider what happens: when the representative gets to Congress she has very little incentive to listen to the other side because it is less likely that compromise will be electorally helpful to her. Indeed, you might consider that the extremism in Congress over the last 30 years has in large part been explained by precisely this phenomenon: districts have been packed to make them less competitive at the party level, so that Republicans and Democrats who win election to Congress are more extreme, and the majority that legislates tends to be less moderate.
Thus what would count as “most” representative or the “best” representation in Hajnal's measure is the level of correspondence between voter preferences and candidates elected. For reasons I just mentioned, this high level of correspondence leads to legislation that is “less” representative of the nation as a whole–that is, legislation that corresponds to fewer preferences of all.
I first read about this in David Lublin's 1998 book The Paradox of Representation and incorporated it into my own work advocating extremely heterogeneous districts by randomly assigning voters into single member (non-territorial) districts. For sure, that might mean persistent “losers” so long as we measure “representation” as “voting for a winning candidate.” But if we treat the topic with a little more subtlety we can see that a vote cast for a losing candidate provides information–and moderation–to those who win.
All best, my friend!
Thanks for chiming in Andrew! Your critique of Hajnal's conception is on point. But here is something to think about (or not). You suggest that losers can moderate the policy preferences of winning representatives, who may not want to risk alienating the losers so much that they then get organized enough to unelect them. This makes a great deal of sense to me. And it makes representation something more than an either/or proposition–either X group gets represented or Y group does.
Further you also make a great deal of sense when you point to one of the possible flaws of redistricting. I think it was Lublin who made a strong argument against racial redistricting because of the potential of vote-packing. Blacks would be able to get the representatives they want because their votes are packed in single districts, but aren't able to make widespread change because their votes are concentrated in too few districts to make a difference. Better to spread them out.
But even with these two important points we're still talking about a scenario in which some populations are able to get political representation and substantive policy, while some almost always lose. From our discussions of extremely heterogenous districts I don't get the sense that what you are advocating would perpetually penalize some group (although potentially it could–people advocating child marriages would probably never win). Rather the losses would be spread much more widely.
Well you'll have to forgive me. I work in that exceptional industry of software and information technology which is way way larger in the private sector than in the public sector. I'm overly influenced by the fact that two of the richest men on the planet, Larry Ellison and Bill Gates, are pioneers in this industry which is notoriously apolitical. There is very little which trickles into this industry, unlike aerospace, that originates from the sort of political machinations of patronage.
Then of course I also don't quite understand why majority minority districts haven't delivered, given the stranglehold certain identifiable politicians have held on those districts for a generation. Even with overt political attempts to create 'enterprise zones' – tax abatements of the sort any Republican would desire, wealth creation simply hasn't taken place.
I agree that black politics has done a relatively lousy job of extracting patronage. I believe it is because so much of the black politics of my generation has been socialist and oppositional – not to mention unwilling and unable to give up on a 400 year old grudge. How might black America be if we demanded police jobs following the example of Tammany Hall? What if we determined that we'd dominate the longshoreman's business? Even if we followed on to keep what we already controlled, waitstaff, domestics, hospitality, livery it would have been a good use of political capital.
No. We had to go after America itself. The whole thing was wrong. Dumb. Just dumb.
To Mr. M.D.C. Bowen
Can't forgive you. Your point-of-view is far too accommodationist for my old Freedom Movement bones to tolerate quietly. In your view, perhaps, I'm too “socialist,” or too begruding. In my view, you are too much in denial of history and its manifestations in contemporary economic and political life.
Your offering of that most exceptional information technology industry as an example of the success available via private enterprise implies too much, again, of the myth of America: in part, that a meritorious system of rewards exists for all who work smart and hard. This old saw is especially distasteful when coupled with your dismissal of 400 years of African-American oppressionas “a 400 year old grudge.” Yours is a classic view, indeed.
I suggest that the lack of wealth-building among African-Americans has at least as much to do with oppressive external factors as it does with inept or wrong-headed African-American leadership. Let me direct your attention to the monumental 1921 massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which whites attacked and destroyed the black community. That destruction included ending the unprecedented commercial and financial prosperity there that had been characterized nationally as Black Wall Street.
Further attention should be given to key sociological statistics that describe comparable circcumstances between populations and among segments of populations: infant mortality; educational achievement; employment/unemployment; incarceration and the “criminal justice” system (looking particularly at differences in rates of arrest, conviction, and sentencing); health (various dimensions); and wealth. A few millionaire privateers do not–cannot–change the reality, the objective conditions, of the masses.
The picture is clear, sir. A systematic and historical oppression is in effect in this nation, despite the individual favorable circumstances you and a tier of others might have gained for ourselves. America is in need of serious revision, to say the least. To ignore that need is to join the empire's onslaught, as it were. To join the onslaught is to be complicit, comprador, an accomplice to the domestic and international atrocities now prevalent in U.S. policy and practice. That, sir, is the dumb, dumber and dumbest thing to do.
–MWS (aka Melmanjaro)
You wrote about insurance on your blog. What better minimizes risk than government intervention? I look at the software and information technology sector as that sector most responsible for minimizing risk and friction. And I see it being nothing without the state. The state does more than allocate patronage remember. But maybe that's just me.
Further I'm pretty sure that the flaw was not so much that black politics is oppositional and socialist, as much as it was millenial. It's the political equivalent of waiting for Jesus on the other side.
This study makes no sense!
There is no surprise that when you say “African-American” you are saying “Democrat”. The argument that you put forth says that “African Americans are frequent losers in the winner take all system”.
As a critic of the Black establishment where I note that despite abundant areas where the Democratic establishment has failed the Black community yet they never miss a beat with regard to Black support – YOU need to look at the intransigence of the Black voter who has 2 modes – Vote for the Democrats or not vote at all in protest of the Democratic Party. THIS is the problem.
I personally believe that the Black community would greatly benefit from the removal of majority Black voting districts. By mixing these districts up those who run for office would be forced to be more moderate AND make broader appeals to more people rather than just to the left extreme. Thus the elected leaders would be forced to be more bound to their results than to the extreme.
There is one important assumption that the article takes for granted that you do not and have not. That a vote represents the individual's preference. When someone tells me they vote for George Bush, I MAY in my head ask “why?” But I assume that for whatever reason that individual's preference was Bush. The vote is something we can measure, something we can see. When you write of “individual voter intransigence” you appear to be making a call for strategic voting.
Strategic voting does occur…but it is much more likely to occur in elections that have different voting rules than “one person one vote one representative.”
With those two things said, read the abstract for what it says about what EXISTS, rather than for what you want to be.
[quote]When you write of “individual voter intransigence” you appear to be making a call for strategic voting. [/quote]
Facebook Uers:
When I say “voter intransigence” what I am saying is that – among some voters – there is a “voter nullification” in place. Though this is not unique to Black people I, being Black and having this population as my primary focus will use our people as an example.
Please note the post-Civil Rights Era Black activism and how it was focused upon obtaining voting power to push those forces who had failed to deliver for our community out of office, replacing them with people who are more responsive to our Permanent Interests.
As such the Black Community preferred the progressive oriented politicians as they promised change and rights under the law.
Few people are willing to admit that upon the success in the local and regional ground game the establishment machine that assumed control failed to sufficiently calculate the need to field an economic order that could address the desired standard of living for the people – once they took control. They had been focused too much on “control”.
When I say “intransigence”, indeed the presence of a more favored political order but the same resulting shortcomings in delivery of desired resources has NOT translated into a similar “purge and struggle for a different pathway forward”. Instead it has translated into a retention of the prevailing ideology and the EXPANSION of it to cover more ground as a means of capturing more of a tax base and the redistribution of these resources in a way that is more favorable to the new majority.
Thus, Facebook User when I hear a Black person who claims to seek the “permanent interests” of the Black community and who choose to give the machine that already runs their community more power so that they might be successful in delivering what they had long ago promised I DON'T leave the question of “WHY” in my head. I ask them to logically correlate their unmet Permanent Interests with their desire to look past the previous unmet problems and their choice to give those who have fallen short a PROMOTION.
If this is not a “keep trying harder at the same thing” strategy, I don't know what is.
NO the answer is NOT to “vote Republican”. Instead the answer if for the community to focus on what IS working and what IS NOT. And load up on one and pitch the other REGARDLESS of the prima facie ideological leanings of either of these two bundles. Failing this they can be said to prefer their ideology over their permanent interests and are damned to get a full cart of the former.
Who Loses in American Democracy? http://t.co/OW8ku6OB