Books about Redistricting from Amazon.com

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Price: $22.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The events of 2003 in Texas were important to the political history of this country Congressman Tom DeLay led a Republican effort to gerrymander the state's thirty-two congressional districts to defeat all ten of the Anglo Democratic incumbents and to elect more Republicans; Democratic state lawmakers fled the state in an effort to defeat the plan. The Lone Star State uproar attracted attention worldwide. The Republicans won this showdown, gaining six additional seats from Texas and protecting the one endangered Republican incumbent. This outcome has undeniably affected national policy-making and has made it more difficult for Democrats to regain a majority in the U.S. House of Representatives. Some of the methods used by DeLay to achieve this result, however, led to his criminal indictment and ultimately to his downfall.

With its eye-opening research, readable style, and insightful commentary, Lines in the Sand provides a front-line account of what happened in 2003, often through the personal stories of members of both parties and of the minority activist groups caught in a political vortex. Law professor Steve Bickerstaff provides much-needed historical perspective and also probes the aftermath of the 2003 redistricting, including the criminal prosecutions of DeLay and his associates and the events that led to DeLay's eventual resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Challenging recent trends both in historical scholarship and in Supreme Court decisions on civil rights, J. Morgan Kousser criticizes the Court's "postmodern equal protection" and demonstrates that legislative and judicial history still matter for public policy.

Offering an original interpretation of the failure of the First Reconstruction (after the Civil War) by comparing it with the relative success of the Second (after World War II), Kousser argues that institutions and institutional rules—not customs, ideas, attitudes, culture, or individual behavior—have been the primary forces shaping American race relations throughout the country's history. Using detailed case studies of redistricting decisions and the tailoring of electoral laws from Los Angeles to the Deep South, he documents how such rules were designed to discriminate against African Americans and Latinos.

Kousser contends that far from being colorblind, Shaw v. Reno (1993) and subsequent "racial gerrymandering" decisions of the Supreme Court are intensely color-conscious. Far from being conservative, he argues, the five majority justices and their academic supporters are unreconstructed radicals who twist history and ignore current realities. A more balanced view of that history, he insists, dictates a reversal of Shaw and a return to the promise of both Reconstructions..
Price: $33.15 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The aim of this book is threefold First to put in one place for the convenience of both scholars and practitioners the basic data on redistricting practices in democracies around the world. Remarkably, this data has never before been collected. Second, to provide a series of short case studies that look in more detail at particular countries with regard to the institutions and practices that have evolved for redistricting and the nature of the debates that have arisen. Third, to begin to look in comparative perspective at the consequences of alternative redistricting mechanisms and at the tradeoffs among competing redistricting criteria.
This volume has contributions from some of the leading specialists on redistricting in the world. The chapters reflect a mix of country-specific material, chapters that are broadly comparative, and chapters whose contributions are more methodological in nature. The chapters in this volume provide an indispensable introduction to the institutions, practices, and consequences of boundary delimitation around the world.
Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. The General Editors are David M. Farrell, Jean Monnet Chair in European Politics and Head of School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester and Alfio Mastropaolo, University of Turin. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research..
Price: $77.08 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The legitimacy of the American electoral system depends on sustaining reasonable levels of fairness, accountability, responsiveness, and common sense. Recent Congressional elections fly in the face of those requirements, however, with a startling lack of competition, growing ideological polarization, and a fierce struggle between the parties to manipulate the electoral rules of the game. Party Lines addresses these problems head on in an authoritative and timely analysis of redistricting in the United States The practice of state legislatures redrawing district lines after the decennial census has long been a controversial aspect of our governing system. Recent developments have added new urgency to earlier debates. The sorry spectacle of mid-decade partisan gerrymandering in Texas renewed public attention to the potential problems of redistricting, reinforcing the view that it is unfairly dominated by self-serving elected officials and parties. The perfunctory character of Congressional elections is another growing problem: in 2002, only four House incumbents were defeated in the general election, the lowest in American history. Despite a hotly contested presidential contest in 2004, that number increased by only three. In Party Lines, eminent political analysts explain the legal and political history of redistricting since the one person–one vote revolution in the 1960s and place it in the larger context of American politics. The authors document the impact of redistricting on competition, polarization, and partisan fairness, and they assess the role technology played in the redistricting process. The final chapter analyzes options for reform, including most importantly the use of independent redistricting commissions as an alternative to the normal state legislative process. Redistricting reform is no panacea but it is a start toward ensuring that American voters still have the largest say in who will represent them Contributors include Micah Altman (Harvard Universtity), Bruce Cain and Karin MacDonald (University of California, Berkeley), Cherie Maestas (Florida State University), L. Sandy Maisel (Colby College), Thomas Mann (Brookings Institution), Michael McDonald (George Mason University), Nathaniel Persily (University of Pennsylvania ), and Walter Stone (University of California, Davis)..
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This book tests the effectiveness of political control and neutral rules on limiting partisan gerrymandering in state legislative redistricting. Specifically, the book examines the 2000 redistricting process in eight states Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, and Washington..
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Pundits have observed that if so many incumbents are returned to Congress each election by such wide margins, perhaps we should look for ways to increase competitiveness—a centerpiece to the American way of life—through redistricting. Do competitive elections increase voter satisfaction? How does voting for a losing candidate affect voters’ attitudes toward government? The not-so-surprising conclusion is that losing voters are less satisfied with Congress and their Representative, but the implications for the way in which we draw congressional and state legislative districts are less straightforward.

Redistricting and Representation argues that competition in general elections is not the sine qua non of healthy democracy, and that it in fact contributes to the low levels of approval of Congress and its members. Brunell makes the case for a radical departure from traditional approaches to redistricting—arguing that we need to "pack" districts with as many like-minded partisans as possible, maximizing the number of winning voters, not losers.

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The process and politics of redistricting have become more complicated over the years. This volume addresses that complication through a series of theoretical, historical, and case study essays..
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Through much of the 1990s, a newly hatched snake wreaked political havoc in the South. When North Carolina gained a seat in Congress following the 1990 census, it sought to rectify a long-standing failure to represent African American voters by creating, under federal pressure, two "majority-minority" voting districts. One of these snaked along Interstate 85 for nearly two hundred miles -- not much wider than the road itself in some places -- and was ridiculed by many as one of the least compact legislative districts ever proposed. From 1993 to 2001, three intertwined cases went before the Supreme Court that decided how far a state could go in establishing voting districts along racial lines. Noted Supreme Court biographer Tinsley Yarbrough examines these closely linked landmark cases to show how the Court addressed the constitutionality of redistricting within the volatile contexts of civil rights and partisan politics. A suit was first filed by Duke University law professor Robinson Everett, a liberal who loathed discrimination but considered racially motivated redistricting a clear violation of the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Yarbrough tells how Everett enlisted associates as plaintiffs and went on to win two Supreme Court victories in Shaw v. Reno (1993) and Shaw v. Hunt (1996) -- both by 5-4 decisions. Following the creation of another "flawed" redistricting plan, he rounded up a new set of plaintiffs to take the battle back to the Supreme Court. But this time, in Easley v. Cromartie -- on the swing vote of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor -- the 5-4 vote went against him. Yarbrough shows the significant impact these cases have had on election law and thefascinating interplay of law, politics, and human conflict that the dispute generated. Drawing heavily on court records and on interviews with attorneys on both sides of the litigation, he relates a complex and intriguing tale about these protracted struggles. Race and Redistricting spotlights efforts to "racially engineer" voting districts in an effort to achieve fair representation. By examining one state's efforts to confront such dilemmas, it helps readers better understand future disputes over race and politics, as well as the ongoing debates over our "color-blind" constitution..
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