IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/socsci/v102y2021i1p29-46.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Are Individuals Harmed by Gerrymandering? Examining Access to Congressional District Offices

Author

Listed:
  • David Niven
  • Benjamin Plener Cover
  • Michael Solimine

Abstract

Objective We consider proximity and access to the district offices of members of Congress to explore whether gerrymandering affects individuals’ capacity to be heard and thus impairs their representation. Methods In a study of six states, we conduct more than 123 million distance measurements to identify residents whose closest district office is in the wrong congressional district. Based on survey results, we then estimate the likelihood that such mismatched individuals will personally visit the office of their member of Congress. Results We find that in five gerrymandered states, between 28.7 and 47.5 percent of residents have a mismatched closest district office, a rate several times higher than in a non‐gerrymandered state. Extrapolating from survey results, we find that mismatched residents are 38 percent less likely to visit their own district office, and that across five states gerrymandering effectively deters nearly 600,000 office visits over a two‐year congressional session. Conclusion Of significance in both the legal and scholarly arena, we find that gerrymandering increases the prevalence of mismatched district offices, thereby impeding constituents from making in‐person visits that are widely viewed as the most effective mechanism for communicating their opinions and needs to Congress. We believe this heretofore undocumented mismatch warrants additional scholarly consideration of gerrymandering's effects on individual's access to tangible aspects of representation.

Suggested Citation

  • David Niven & Benjamin Plener Cover & Michael Solimine, 2021. "Are Individuals Harmed by Gerrymandering? Examining Access to Congressional District Offices," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(1), pages 29-46, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:102:y:2021:i:1:p:29-46
    DOI: 10.1111/ssqu.12883
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12883
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ssqu.12883?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Cover, Albert D. & Brumberg, Bruce S., 1982. "Baby Books and Ballots: The Impact of Congressional Mail on Constituent Opinion," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(2), pages 347-359, June.
    2. Costa, Mia, 2017. "How Responsive are Political Elites? A Meta-Analysis of Experiments on Public Officials," Journal of Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 4(3), pages 241-254, December.
    3. Joshua L. Kalla & David E. Broockman, 2016. "Campaign Contributions Facilitate Access to Congressional Officials: A Randomized Field Experiment," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(3), pages 545-558, July.
    4. King, Gary, 1991. "Constituency Service and Incumbency Advantage," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 21(1), pages 119-128, January.
    5. King, Gary & Browning, Robert X, 1987. "Democratic Representation and Partisan Bias in Congressional Elections," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(4), pages 1251-1273, December.
    6. John N. Friedman & Richard T. Holden, 2008. "Optimal Gerrymandering: Sometimes Pack, but Never Crack," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(1), pages 113-144, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. David Niven & Barbara Harris Combs & Carolette Norwood & Kalyn E. Rossiter & Michael E. Solimine, 2022. "The boundaries of confusion: Gerrymandering and racial disparities in state House and congressional district line congruity," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 103(6), pages 1507-1518, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Justin Svec & James Hamilton, 2015. "Endogenous voting weights for elected representatives and redistricting," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 26(4), pages 434-441, December.
    2. Wolfgang Pesendorfer & Faruk Gul, 2007. "Strategic Redistricting," Levine's Bibliography 843644000000000351, UCLA Department of Economics.
    3. Christian R. Grose & Abby K. Wood, 2020. "Randomized experiments by government institutions and American political development," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 401-413, December.
    4. Nicholas R. Jenkins & Michelangelo Landgrave & Gabriel E. Martinez, 2020. "Do political donors have greater access to government officials? Evidence from a FOIA field experiment with US municipalities," Journal of Behavioral Public Administration, Center for Experimental and Behavioral Public Administration, vol. 3(2).
    5. Awad, Emiel & Minaudier, Clement, 2023. "Persuasive Lobbying and the Value of Connections," SocArXiv 8z4ax, Center for Open Science.
    6. John N. Friedman & Richard Holden, 2020. "Optimal Gerrymandering in a competitive environment," Economic Theory Bulletin, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 347-367, October.
    7. Donald P. Green & Alan S. Gerber, 2003. "The Underprovision of Experiments in Political Science," The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, , vol. 589(1), pages 94-112, September.
    8. Saez, Emmanuel & Stantcheva, Stefanie, 2018. "A simpler theory of optimal capital taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 120-142.
    9. Greiner, Michael & Kim, Jaemin & Cordon Thor, Jennifer, 2023. "Narcissistic CEOs and their corporate political activity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    10. Brown, Jeffrey R. & Huang, Jiekun, 2020. "All the president's friends: Political access and firm value," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 415-431.
    11. Michael Ensley & Scott Marchi & Michael Munger, 2007. "Candidate uncertainty, mental models, and complexity: Some experimental results," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 132(1), pages 231-246, July.
    12. Balán, Pablo & Dodyk, Juan & Puente, Ignacio, 2022. "The political behavior of family firms: Evidence from Brazil," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 151(C).
    13. Kai Hao Yang & Alexander K. Zentefis, 2023. "Extreme Points of First-Order Stochastic Dominance Intervals: Theory and Applications," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2355, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    14. Marie Daumal, 2021. "The economic and political causes of the U.S. 2008 financial crisis [Les causes économiques et politiques de la crise financière de 2008]," Working Papers hal-03261070, HAL.
    15. Pei Li & Yi Lu & Tuan-Heww Sng, 2017. "Artificial Administrative Boundaries: Evidence from China," CEH Discussion Papers 09, Centre for Economic History, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    16. Tim R. Sass, 2000. "The Determinants of Hispanic Representation in Municipal Government," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 66(3), pages 609-630, January.
    17. Patrick Balles & Ulrich Matter & Alois Stutzer, 2024. "Special Interest Groups Versus Voters and the Political Economics of Attention," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 134(662), pages 2290-2320.
    18. Md. Jahir Uddin Palas & Fernando Moreira, 2022. "The impact of government assistance on banks' efficiency," International Journal of Finance & Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(2), pages 1731-1748, April.
    19. Kai Hao Yang & Alexander K. Zentefis, 2022. "Gerrymandering and the Limits of Representative Democracy," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 2328, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    20. Kolotilin, Anton & Wolitzky, Alexander, 0. "Distributions of posterior quantiles via matching," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:socsci:v:102:y:2021:i:1:p:29-46. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0038-4941 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.