Three Essays on the Political Consequences of Geographic Boundaries in U.S. Political Institutions.

political geography;Political Science;Social Sciences;Political Science

Cottrell, David T.Chen, Jowei ;

University of Michigan

关键词: political geography;    Political Science;    Social Sciences;    Political Science;   

Others  :  https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/handle/2027.42/116745/dcott_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

瑞士|英语

来源: The Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship

【 摘 要 】

Electoral and administrative boundaries make geographic space relevant to the United States political system. I examine this relationship between geography and politics in three parts. In the first part, I establish a theoretical link between partisan residential patterns and Congressional representation.Using a computational model to simulate legislative elections in the presence of partisan segregation, I develop predictions about how partisan geography affects the vote-to-seats curve.As a result, I show that when districts are drawn to be compact, contiguous, and equally apportioned, Democratic clustering not only flattens the votes-to-seats curve but, when Democrats cluster more than Republicans, the clustering tends to flatten the curve asymmetrically, causing Democrats and Republicans to translate the same number of votes into a different number of seats. In the second part, I provide empirical evidence that the geographic distribution of partisan voters does, in fact, influence partisan representation as predicted by the computational model.I do this in two ways. I show that a randomly generated sample of potential Congressional districts - drawn only with respect to the underlying geographic distribution of the population - nearly replicates the partisanship of Congressional districts across a number of states. And I show that increases in the urban/non-urban divisions in partisanship correspond with a change in district-level partisanship that is consistent with the computational model;;s predictions.Lastly, in the third part, I analyze differences in the implementation of federal health and safety policy that occur between the geographic jurisdictions of federal and state regulators.I show that OSHA;;s devolution of federal regulatory authority to the states has not only resulted in a lack of responsiveness by the states, but has also created geographic discontinuities between state and federal jurisdictions.Therefore, whether it is through the residential patterns of partisans across electoral districts, or themanipulation of the geographic shape of the districts themselves, or the execution of policy between states and administrative jurisdictions, I show that political boundaries influence representation and shape policy.