Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T16:15:50.361Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Statistical Properties of Competitive Districts: What the Central Limit Theorem Can Teach Us about Election Reform

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 April 2007

Justin Buchler
Affiliation:
Case Western Reserve University

Extract

Any examination of newspaper editorials and reform group positions will indicate that the most commonly perceived problem with U.S. elections at the moment is that they are rarely competitive. This absence of competition has prompted recent proposals in several states, most prominently in California and Ohio, to reform the redistricting process to increase the frequency of competitive elections. These propositions failed, but that is unlikely the end of such attempts. The reason for these proposals is obvious. Political education in the U.S. indoctrinates us at a young age to believe that competition is good. In economics, market competition provides social benefits, and, by analogy, political competition must provide similar benefits. This argument is frequently made explicitly, such as by Schumpeter (1942), and it has its roots as far back as the often-assigned Federalist Papers #10 and #51. Of course, the economic definition of competition has little to do with the political definition of a competitive election. Broadly speaking, there are two economic definitions of competition: (1) competitive behavior, which generally means innovation, and (2) competitive market structures, which means many buyers, many sellers, and perfect information. In contrast, a competitive election generally means one in which the candidates' vote shares are roughly equal, or similarly, one in which each candidate has a roughly 50% chance of winning. The only obvious relationship between these definitions is that we might equate vote shares with market shares, but the benefits of a competitive market accrue regardless of whether sellers have equal market shares—they simply must charge the same price for the same goods, as determined by the intersection of the supply and demand curves. In fact, in a competitive market, each firm should have such a small market share that no firm is a price-giver, and the idea of an election for a single-member district in which there are so many candidates that no candidate has a significant vote share seems untenable. Alternatively, we might draw an analogy between pressure on sellers to charge the same price for the same good and pressure on candidates toward policy convergence, but the idea of all candidates offering the same bundle of policies makes many people uncomfortable as well. So, the analogy between the efficiency of a competitive market and the benefits of a competitive election falls apart. Of course, Schumpeter's (1942) argument was that political leaders should compete for votes by innovating with respect to policy based on the first definition of competition, but again, that means that the economic analogy has little to say about whether elections should be uncertain and decided by narrow margins. The fact that we happen to use the same word for different circumstances does not logically allow us to say the following: because competition is good in the marketplace, close elections are good. Free market economics cannot be used to defend the drawing of competitive districts without straining the analogy beyond its limits, regardless of how intuitively appealing the analogy is.

Type
FEATURES
Copyright
© 2007 The American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Brady, Henry E., Justin Buchler, Matt Jarvis, and John McNulty. 2001. Counting All The Votes. Berkeley: Survey Research Center/Institute of Governmental Studies, UC Berkeley.Google Scholar
Brunell, Thomas. 2006. “Rethinking Redistricting: How Drawing Uncompetitive Districts Eliminates Gerrymanders, Enhances Representation, and Improves Attitudes toward Congress.” PS: Political Science and Politics 39 (January): 7785.Google Scholar
Buchler, Justin. 2005. “Competition, Representation and Redistricting: The Case against Competitive Congressional Districts.” Journal of Theoretical Politics 17 (4): 43163.Google Scholar
Buchler, Justin. Forthcoming. “The Social Sup-optimality of Competitive Elections.” Public Choice.Google Scholar
Butler, David, and Bruce E. Cain. 1992. Congressional Redistricting: Comparative and Theoretical Perspectives. New York: McMillan.Google Scholar
CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project. 2001. “A Preliminary Assessment of the Reliability of Existing Voting Equipment.” Version 1: February 1.Google Scholar
Niemi, Richard G., and John Deegan Jr. 1978. “A Theory of Political Districting.” American Political Science Review 72 (4): 130423.Google Scholar
Niemi, Richard G. 1982. “ The Effects of Districting on Tradeoffs among Party Competition, Electoral Responsiveness, and Seats-Votes Relationships.” In Representation and Redistricting Issues, eds. Bernard Grofman, Arend Lijphart, Robert B. McKay, and Howard A. Scarrow. Lexington, KY: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Persily, Nathaniel. 2002. “In Defense of Foxes Guarding Henhouses: The Case for Judicial Acquiescence to Incumbent-Protecting Gerrymanders.” Harvard Law Review 116 (2): 64983.Google Scholar
Schumpeter, Joseph. 1942. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar