Organizing for Political Change
Paper Session
Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022 12:15 PM - 2:15 PM (EST)
- Chair: Mohamed Saleh, Toulouse School of Economics
Identifying Gerrymandering and its Consequences: Evidence from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
Abstract
Electoral districts in the United States are redrawn following each decennial census. Of great concern is the possibility of "gerrymandering": the redrawing of districts in response to political incentives. However, it is challenging to isolate politically-motivated redistricting from adjustments made in response to concomitant local economic and demographic change. The 1986 the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) legalized millions of illegal, primarily Hispanic, immigrants to the United States, providing a unique source of variation allowing us to identify politically-motivated redistricting. The IRCA shocked the composition of local electorates, differentially across counties, in the absence of economic change or changed local demographics (illegal immigrants were already counted in the census). We first show that the IRCA shock to the electorate was partisan: counties with more legalized IRCA migrants vote differentially more for Democrats in gubernatorial and presidential elections. We then show that the shock distorted the shape of electoral districts: spatial compactness differentially falls in districts containing counties with more legalized migrants. Crucially, differential spatial distortions only result from redistricting following the 1990 census, but not the 1980 census. Moreover, there are no differential distortions associated with IRCA legalization in states with redistricting conducted by nonpartisan commissions, providing further evidence that distortions are politically-motivated. Finally, we examine the effects of partisan redistricting on Hispanics' descriptive representation. We find that counties with more legalized IRCA migrants elect more Hispanics to the US House of Representatives~---~but only when redistricting is Democrat-controlled, not when Republican-controlled or conducted by nonpartisan commissions.Intra-elite Conflict and the Demand for Power-Sharing: Evidence from Khedival Egypt
Abstract
We study how the rising economic power of a disenfranchised elite can increase its de jure political representation and its demand for de facto power-sharing. We draw on evidence from Khedival Egypt in the aftermath of the American Civil War cotton boom in 1861–1865 that increased the economic power of village headmen (the rural bourgeoisie) vis-à-vis the aristocracy. We employ a wide range of novel data sources on Members of Parliament (MPs) in 1824–1923, parliamentary minutes from 1866–1882, and the failed Urabi uprising in 1879–1882 that aimed at overthrowing the Khedive and was defeated by the British occupation in 1882. We first document that village headmen almost monopolized parliamentary seats in 1866–1882. The parliamentary representation of cotton areas first declined in 1866–1882 by policy design, before it partially rebounded after the 1882 occupation. The latter positive effect is driven by new entrants, and not persisting incumbents, thus suggesting a larger replacement process of the pre-1882 parliamentary class in cotton areas. Our preliminary findings from the parliamentary minutes in 1876–1882 and the Urabi uprising reveal that MPs from cotton areas gave more speeches, and that cotton areas witnessed more Urabi deaths and arrests, suggesting a stronger demand for power-sharing that was first penalized and and then later co-opted by the British occupation. We also conduct a discourse analysis of the parliamentary minutes in 1866–1882.Army of Shadows: Organizing Resistance in Occupied France
Abstract
In this paper, we draw upon data on more than three hundred thousand individual resistance fighters in France to document the production function of military insurgency against oppressive rule, focusing on heroism, leadership, arms and labor. We first find that exposure to the heroic network forged by service under Phillippe Petain at the Battle of Verdun reduces civilian resistance in the Second World War by 8%, even while it raises organized military resistance earlier in the war. We interpret these effects as consistent with the diffusion of values and escalating commitments due to complementarity. In addition to estimating the effects of combat heroism, we exploit exogenous variation in the role of leadership, the supply of arms and the supply of labor, drawing upon hitherto untapped intelligence files from the Special Operations Executive and the Office of Strategic Services.Discussant(s)
Charles Angelucci
,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Richard Holden
,
University of New South Wales
Paola Sapienza
,
Northwestern University
Guo Xu
,
University of California-Berkeley
JEL Classifications
- P5 - Comparative Economic Systems
- N4 - Government, War, Law, International Relations, and Regulation