Vol. 9 No. 10 (October 1999) pp. 467-471.
RACE, REDISTRICTING, AND REPRESENTATION: THE UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES OF BLACK
MAJORITY DISTRICTS by David T. Canon. Chicago: The University of Chicago
Press, 1999. xiv, 324 pp. Cloth $50.00 Paper $18.00.
Reviewed by Richard L. Engstrom, Department of Political Science, University
of New Orleans.
In SHAW v. RENO (1993), a five-member majority of the Supreme Court
adopted a district-specific approach to the concept of "gerrymandering." They
uncoupled that concept from the traditional notion that gerrymanders "waste
votes" of some identifiable group of voters. In holding that a claim of
"racial gerrymandering" lodged against two majority-African American
congressional districts in North Carolina was justiciable, despite the fact
that whites would continue to be a majority in a disproportionate number of
districts in the state, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, wrote for the majority
and identified "special harms" that the deliberate creation of such districts
might entail. According to her, the practice "reinforces racial stereotypes
and threatens to undermine our system of representative democracy by
signaling to elected officials that they represent a particular racial group
rather than their constituency as a whole" (SHAW, at 650).
This assertion that African Americans elected from such districts will
represent their constituents in a racially selective manner is treated as a
"testable proposition" (p. 2) by David Canon. Rather than focusing on the
frequently asked question, "whether whites can represent blacks?" as previous
studies critical of these districts have done, Canon turns the question
around and asks, "whether blacks can represent whites?" His answer to this
latter question is an unequivocal yes! No only can blacks represent whites,
but, according to Canon, the whites captured in the new majority-African
American congressional districts created during the 1990s receive better
representation from their African American representatives than the blacks in
so-called "black influence districts" receive from their white
representatives. O'Connor's assertion about selective representation is, in
short, "simply wrong" (p. 84), and she and the rest of the Court's majority,
Canon maintains, are themselves "guilty of racial stereotyping" (p. 84).
Canon distinguishes between the more traditional African American
candidates, who engage in a "politics of difference," in which differences
between the races are viewed as central to politics and African American
voters constitute a representative's primary constituency, and the "new
style" African American candidates, who engage in a nonconfrontational
"politics of commonality" in which politics is viewed in biracial terms and
white voters constitute an important part of a representative's electoral
coalition. Based on Canon's review of campaign coverage, only four of the 15
African Americans elected from either "new" or "substantially altered"
majority-
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African American districts in 1992 had engaged in campaigns based on
difference politics. The explanation for this is what Canon refers to as his
"supply-side" theory, which in a nutshell is "the racial composition of the
candidate pool in the Democratic primary determines the type of
representation a district will receive" (p. 127). The theory is bound by the
racial composition of the districts themselves, which in the case of the new
districts ranged from around 50 percent African American in total population
(about 45 percent in voting age population) to close to 70 percent in total
population (and less than 65 percent in voting age population). These are
not districts, in short, that bear any resemblance to "political apartheid,"
as suggested by O'Connor in SHAW (at 647).
The electoral opportunities provided by districts such as these can be
expected to attract several serious African American candidates. The supply-
side theory maintains that the type of candidate that wins is determined by
whether a serious white candidate also contests the Democratic primary. If
one does, then the victorious African American candidate (assuming the white
does not win due to African Americans dispersing their vote across too many
candidates) is likely to be a traditional politics of difference candidate
appealing primarily to African American voters. If no serious white
candidate is in the race, however, the winner is likely to be a new style
politics of commonality candidate who attracts considerable white support.
Canon is very successful at postdicting the outcomes of the elections through
this theory (the two clearly inconsistent cases were the elections of
commonality candidates despite the presence of serious white competitors).
The major contribution of this book concerns the subsequent style and
content of the representation provided by these new African American
representatives. Those elected through difference politics are expected to
focus on racial issues and play more of an outsider role in Congress. Those
elected through the commonality approach are expected to display more balance
in and be more pragmatic toward their legislative role. In assessing the
representation provided by these new African American members of Congress,
Canon departs from previous studies by going well beyond a reliance on roll
call voting as the measure of representation. He is extremely critical of
previous studies that rely primarily, and often exclusively, on roll call
voting indices, which he says "are worthless as an indicator of behavior that
addresses constituents' racial wants" (p. 31). Canon's critique of these
indices is not novel. They contain few votes that deal explicitly with race
(pp. 30-31, 168, 175-177), mask important differences among representatives
that have similar scores (pp. 172-173), and suffer from selection bias, in
that only moderate measures reach a stage in the legislative process where
every member is expected to respond with a recorded vote (pp. 165, 173-175).
It is typical for scholars relying on such measures to acknowledge their
limitations, but then proceed to largely ignore those limitations when
reaching and presenting their conclusions. Canon is not guilty of this.
Although he does include analyses of roll call indices in this work, he goes
far beyond previous studies in examining other types of behavior.
Canon employs numerous data collection techniques to gather a variety
of measures of representational behavior. This triangulation of methods and
measures, or as he says, "more accurately, dec-angulation" (p. 244), is the
major strength of this book.
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In addition to examining some roll call voting indices, he also content
analyzed bills, amendments, speeches, newsletters, and newspaper coverage,
examined committee assignments, leadership positions, the composition of
personal staffs, and the location of district offices, and conducted numerous
interviews with representatives and their staff members. As with roll call
votes, Canon is candid about the limitations of each type of measure, and he
relies on the impressive consistency in his findings across indicators, which
are almost always limited temporally to the 103rd Congress (1993-1994), to
build confidence in his conclusions. The results, with respect to
legislative roles, reveal that:
"Commonality members were more likely than difference members to serve in the
leadership, slightly more moderate in their roll call behavior, less likely
to emphasize race in their speeches on the floor and in their sponsorship and
cosponsorship of legislation, and more likely to cosponsor bills that were
successful in the legislative process" (p. 200).
With respect to constituency communication, Canon discovers that:
"Commonality members' staffs were the only ones that did not over- or
underrepresent the black composition of the district, and they had the
smallest disproportionate representation of whites on their staffs of any
type of member. Commonality members also pursued a much more obvious
balancing strategy in the placement of their district offices in an effort to
reach both black and white voters, while difference members were more
concerned about placing their offices in black neighborhoods. Finally, there
were dramatic differences in the racial composition of the pictures in the
member newsletters and significant differences in some dimensions of the
newspaper coverage between commonality and difference members" (p. 241).
Although Canon does not apply his supply-side theory to white representatives, he does compare them to the African American representatives
on these measures. More specifically, he includes in his analysis those
whites representing districts in which African Americans constitute at least
a 25 percent of the population (of which only four were Republicans). These
are what many have called "black influence districts." Such districts are
usually sacrificed in the creation of majority-minority districts, and the
reduction in their number has led many to argue that the representation of
African Americans, in an overall sense, has been harmed by the creation of
the majority-minority districts. Roll call voting analyses allegedly confirm
the notion that the substantive representation of African Americans is
enhanced more by electing additional white Democrats than by electing more
African Americans. Canon's look beyond roll call votes provides little
support for this idea, however. The gap between these white representatives
and the African American representatives on his various measures of
representation is usually much larger than that between the two types of
African Americans, leading Canon to conclude that "on average, the white
members . did not show much interest in racial issues" (p. 200). Indeed,
when it came to representing their other race constituents, Canon concludes
"Most white representatives from black influence districts do not spend much
time representing their black constituents, while most black members of
Congress spend a substantial proportion of their time representing white
constituents" (p. 91). Canon's results suggest that districts that Justice
O'Connor indicates resemble "political apartheid"
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might more appropriately considered "white influence districts."
RACE, REDISTRICTING, AND REPRESENTATION is the most important study yet
published dealing with the representational consequences of the new majority-
African American districts created following the 1990 census. Not
surprising, given his findings, Canon has moved from "a grudging acceptance"
(p. xii) of this vehicle for providing minorities with a voice in legislative
bodies to becoming quite enthusiastic about them. Rather than providing
constituents with selective racial representation, he believes they are a
medium through which we can "break down racial barriers rather than erect
them" (p. 264).
Canon's enthusiasm may have interfered with his objectively in one
respect, however. His treatment of cumulative voting, the most frequently
mentioned alternative arrangement for improving minority representation,
especially since SHAW, both ignores and overstates recent empirical findings
concerning that election system. He overstates the results of Greg D. Adams'
study of voting in the Illinois House of Representatives both during and
after cumulative voting was used to elect that body (Adams 1996). Canon
claims that this study "provides strong empirical evidence that the
cumulative system in Illinois produced more ideologically extreme members of
the state assembly than did the single-member district system" (p. 260).
Adams' study relies on an index based on a set of "key votes" identified by
the Illinois Political Action Committee, an organization with ties to the
Illinois Chamber of Commerce. The index was simply the percentage of times a
legislator voted in agreement with the preferred position of IPAC. The
results showed greater variation in index scores when that body was elected
by cumulative voting. The "key votes" on which the index is based are not
identified by Adams, but he nowhere indicates that the index provides a
measure of ideological extremism. Indeed, if Canon is correct about the
problem of selection bias in roll call vote indices, then the percentage
agreement on these identified votes is hardly likely to constitute such a
measure. In addition, Canon states that cumulative voting "is relatively
complex and will produce voter confusion, at least in the short run" (p.
260). Evidence from exit polls in numerous settings in which cumulative
voting was being used for the first time, however, indicates that this has
not been a serious problem. Voters, especially minority voters, have
understood and used the cumulative options without difficulty (see Brischetto
and Engstrom 1997, Engstrom and Brishetto 1998, and studies cited therein).
Canon's criticism of the competition might not be fair, but this does
not distract from his assessment of the representational consequences of the
majority-African American districts themselves. This impressive study is, as
noted above, the best yet on this subject.
REFERENCES
Adams, Greg D. 1996. "Legislative Effects of Single-Member Vs. Multi-Member
Districts." AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE 40: 129-44.
Brischetto, Robert R., and Richard L. Engstrom. 1997. "Cumulative Voting and
Latino Representation: Exit Surveys in Fifteen Texas Communities." SOCIAL
SCIENCE QUARTERLY 78: 973-991.
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Engstrom, Richard L., and Robert R. Brischetto. 1998. "Is Cumulative Voting
Too Complex? Evidence from Exit Polls."STETSON LAW REVIEW 27: 813-833.
SHAW v. RENO, 509 U.S. 630 (1993).
Copyright 1999