RACIAL REDISTRICTING FOR MINORITY REPRESENTATION WITHOUT PARTISAN BIAS: A THEORETICAL APPROACH

Abstract

Scholars of American politics have expressed the concern that concentration of minority voters into limited districts in order to promote minority representation induces the partisan “perverse effect” of reducing the number of seats won by Democrats. Our theory explains how the perverse effect can occur and demonstrates that racial redistricting generates a tradeoff between the number of minority legislators and the number of Democratic legislators. Our theory suggests that in light of this tradeoff, the diversification of districts as well as the concentration of minorities (“second-order diversity”) may be essential for the proportional representation of minorities without partisan electoral bias.