<x-flowed>Thread-Topic: Redistricting and competition
Thread-Index: AcYXsRFOYU0+4sxlQ2yDzdYMCEDCeA==
From: "Kimball, David C." <kimballd@msx.umsl.edu>
To: <election-law_gl@majordomo.lls.edu>


In response to the post from Rick Pildes two days ago:

1.    The Abramowitz article in Journal of Politics
(http://journalofpolitics.org/files/68_1/Incumbency.pdf) is published
now. Perhaps Michael McDonald can post a link to his paper on
redistricting and competition (or I'd be happy to post it, if that's ok
with Mike).  Their exchange in PS should be out any day.  I encourage
people on the list to read both sides and decide for themselves whether
Abramowitz is "devastatingly criticized" by McDonald.  After eyeballing
the congressional election results in 2002 I felt fairly sure that
redistricting was crushing political competition in the United States.
After reading these papers now I'm not so sure.
2.    As I implied earlier, Abramowitz isn't the only one to express
doubt in writing about the impact of redistricting on competition.
Wrighton and Squire do so in a 1997 article in Journal of Politics.
Swain, Borelli and Reed suggest that it depends on the measure of
competition in a 1998 article in Political Research Quarterly.
Abramowitz is one of the top congressional election researchers in
political science, so I don't consider him an outlier.
3.    That's an interesting question about whether justices should
read about unpublished studies.  There's no doubt that words change
while manuscripts are in press, but I think it's highly unlikely that
major findings in a study would change.  In political science, it
usually takes a good year from initial submission of a study until final
publication (the first studies of the 2004 elections are just starting
to come out now).  This means courts could miss some relevant research
if they are hearing timely election cases.  As I understand it, the
Supreme Court has disregarded social science research in past decisions,
so maybe it wouldn't hurt much if they did hear about unpublished
studies.

=20

- David Kimball

=20

David C. Kimball

Associate Professor, Department of Political Science

University of Missouri-St. Louis

One University Blvd., 347 SSB

St. Louis, MO 63121-4400

phone: 314-516-6050

web page: http://www.umsl.edu/~kimballd





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