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Enhancing Democracy Through Legislative Redistricting

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  • Gelman, Andrew
  • King, Gary

Abstract

We demonstrate the surprising benefits of legislative redistricting (including partisan gerrymandering) for American representative democracy. In so doing, our analysis resolves two long-standing controversies in American politics. First, whereas some scholars believe that redistricting reduces electoral responsiveness by protecting incumbents, others, that the relationship is spurious, we demonstrate that both sides are wrong: redistricting increases responsiveness. Second, while some researchers believe that gerrymandering dramatically increases partisan bias and others deny this effect, we show both sides are in a sense correct. Gerrymandering biases electoral systems in favor of the party that controls the redistricting as compared to what would have happened if the other party controlled it, but any type of redistricting reduces partisan bias as compared to an electoral system without redistricting. Incorrect conclusions in both literatures resulted from misjudging the enormous uncertainties present during redistricting periods, making simplified assumptions about the redistricters' goals, and using inferior statistical methods.

Suggested Citation

  • Gelman, Andrew & King, Gary, 1994. "Enhancing Democracy Through Legislative Redistricting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 88(3), pages 541-559, September.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:88:y:1994:i:03:p:541-559_09
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    Cited by:

    1. Timothy Besley & Anne Case, 2003. "Political Institutions and Policy Choices: Evidence from the United States," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 41(1), pages 7-73, March.
    2. Prato, Carlo & Wolton, Stephane, 2014. "Electoral Imbalances and their Consequences," MPRA Paper 68650, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 26 Nov 2015.
    3. Barry Burden & Corwin Smidt, 2020. "Evaluating Legislative Districts Using Measures of Partisan Bias and Simulations," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(4), pages 21582440209, December.
    4. Franklin Mixon & Kamal Upadhayaya, 1998. "Does federal electoral redistricting induce congressional quits? An empirical note," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(2), pages 61-63.
    5. Justin Svec & James Hamilton, 2015. "Endogenous voting weights for elected representatives and redistricting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 434-441, December.
    6. Danny Hayes & Seth C. McKee, 2009. "The Participatory Effects of Redistricting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1006-1023, October.
    7. Faruk Gul & Wolfgang Pesendorfer, 2007. "Competitive Redistricting," Levine's Bibliography 321307000000000748, UCLA Department of Economics.
    8. Wolfgang Pesendorfer & Faruk Gul, 2007. "Strategic Redistricting," Levine's Bibliography 843644000000000351, UCLA Department of Economics.
    9. Timothy Besley & Ian Preston, 2007. "Electoral Bias and Policy Choice: Theory and Evidence," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(4), pages 1473-1510.
    10. Chatterji, Aaron K. & Kim, Joowon & McDevitt, Ryan C., 2018. "School spirit: Legislator school ties and state funding for higher education," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 254-269.
    11. Benjamin Highton, 2011. "The influence of strategic retirement on the incumbency advantage in US House elections," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(4), pages 431-447, October.
    12. Stephen Coate & Brian Knight, 2005. "Socially Optimal Districting," NBER Working Papers 11462, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

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