POLI 1100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Unintended Consequences, Majority Minority
22 May 2018
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Reviewing Types of Representation :policy, allocative, casework, and symbolic. These are legislator’s job.
Descriptive representation:
- What congress looks like
- Congress does not look like its population.
- Can be physical characteristics and non physical.
- Not very racially diverse.
- Women:
o Lack of representation. We rank 100th in the world
- Very wealthy.
- Old
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Paradox of congress: we love our individual members of Congress, but dislike Congress as a whole
-keep electing them. Consistently re-elected. 90% incumbency rates, often by huge margins.
-when you think of congress as a whole, you mostly think policy. But individuals are rated based
off not just policy, but allocative, casework, and symbolic.
Getting elected to Congress:
-structuring congressional elections—reapportionment, redistricting, and gerrymandering.
-partisan gerrymandering: parties trying to screw each other over. Usually allowed, but
the SC is ruling on it soon.
-racial gerrymandering: this is very important to changing composition of Congress. Very
common before 1960s. Tried to prevent people of color from being elected.
-then the SC said you cannot that. They encouraged a different type of district
(majority minority district).
-this led to more minority representation. But there is a minority
paradox
-by packing a minority district, the likelihood of getting an elective who
is racially diverse is high. One unintended consequence however is increasing the number of republican
members of congress. This is because you pack all of the democrats into one district. Increases
individual number of minority members of congress, but it decreased their power because of the change
in parties.
Formal vs informal requirements.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Reviewing types of representation :policy, allocative, casework, and symbolic. Congress does not look like its population. Can be physical characteristics and non physical. Paradox of congress: we love our individual members of congress, but dislike congress as a whole. When you think of congress as a whole, you mostly think policy. But individuals are rated based off not just policy, but allocative, casework, and symbolic. Partisan gerrymandering: parties trying to screw each other over. Usually allowed, but the sc is ruling on it soon. Racial gerrymandering: this is very important to changing composition of congress. Tried to prevent people of color from being elected. They encouraged a different type of district (majority minority district). paradox. By packing a minority district, the likelihood of getting an elective who is racially diverse is high. One unintended consequence however is increasing the number of republican members of congress. This is because you pack all of the democrats into one district.
