Do 40-Year-Old Facts Still Matter? Long-Run Effects of Federal Oversight under the Voting Rights Act

Ang, Desmond

doi:10.1257/app.20170572

Cited by 14 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…South (Kuziemko and Washington 2018). A recent and growing literature has exploited the geographic variation in the VRA provisions to analyze the effect of enfranchisement on the distribution of state funds (Cascio and Washington 2014), on white backlash against the Democratic party (Ang 2019), on black elected officials in local governments and government spending (Bernini, Facchini, and Testa 2018) and on labor market outcomes (Aneja and Avenancio-Leon 2019). We contribute to this literature by studying the impact of the VRA on the police treatment of blacks.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act

2020

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This paper investigates the relationship between the franchise and law enforcement practices using evidence from the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. We find that, following the VRA, black arrest rates fell in counties that were both covered by the legislation and had a large number of newly enfranchised black voters. We uncover no corresponding patterns for white arrest rates. The reduction in black arrest rates is driven by less serious offenses, for which police might have more enforcement discretion. Importantly, our results are driven by arrests carried out by sheriffs-who are always elected. While there are no corresponding changes for municipal police chiefs in aggregate, we do find similar patterns in covered counties with elected rather than appointed chiefs. We also show that our findings cannot be rationalized by alternative explanations, such as differences in collective bargaining, changes in the underlying propensity to commit crimes, responses to changes in policing practices, and changes in the suppression of civil right protests. Taken together, these results document that voting rights, when combined with elected, rather than appointed, chief law enforcement officers, can lead to improved treatment of minority groups by police.

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confidence: 99%

The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act

2020

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“…The same report mentions that just three months after the VRA passed, "in many areas of the South, there is full compliance with the Act." Previous research has shown the big push in registration and turnout generated by the VRA (Fresh, 2018;Ang, 2019). Figure 1 illustrates this overall success of the VRA and shows the distribution of turnout rates in VRA counties (left panel) and in other counties (right panel) in the 1964 (in red) and 1968 (in blue) presidential elections.…”

Section: Voting Rights Actmentioning

confidence: 85%

“…The first presidential election after the reform benefited the Republican candidate (Richard Nixon) and a pro-segregation candidate (George Wallace). Previous research suggests that this fact is not anecdotal and that the VRA did not shift the median voter towards more redistributive policies (Fresh, 2018;Ang, 2019). Following the VRA, a dealignment process decoupled policy preferences from incomerelated issues towards race-related issues (Kuziemko and Washington, 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 91%

“…This paper contributes to three strands of literature. First, it takes part in the debate on the consequences of the VRA (Besley et al, 2010;Cascio and Washington, 2013;Schuit and Rogowski, 2017;Fresh, 2018;Kuziemko and Washington, 2018;Bernini et al, 2018;Ang, 2019;Facchini et al, 2020). These previous studies mainly focused on the effect of the VRA on voting behavior and representation in the long run.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ballots Instead of Bullets? The Effect of the Voting Rights Act on Political Violence

Lacroix

2022

Journal of the European Economic Association

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The extension of voting rights epitomizes the construction of modern democracies. This paper empirically investigates the effect of such an enfranchisement on political violence in the context of the US Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which forbade discrimination in voting. The formula the VRA used to determine the counties it applied to generated both geographic and temporal local discontinuities in enfranchisement. This paper’s empirical strategy takes advantage of these features by comparing the evolution of political violence in geographically close covered and non-covered counties. Difference-in-differences estimates indicate that VRA coverage halved the incidence and the onset of political violence. Additional empirical evidence implies that voting became the new institutionalized way to state political preferences. Indeed, VRA coverage mostly decreased electoral and small-scale strategic violence. This result is not explained by disaggrievement. Extensions suggest that new strategies of political action may explain a decrease in violence after enfranchisement.

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“…Additionally, racial conservatives in statehouses intensified gerrymandering to create a structural advantage that favors white rural voters and allows preferred candidates to win a majority of seats with a minority of votes (Anderson, 2018). This artillery of voter suppression tactics accelerated after the 2013 Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court ruling, which declared that states no longer needed federal pre-clearance for changes to election rules as required under the 1965 Voting Rights Act (Ang, 2018).…”

Section: Politics and The Racial Fixmentioning

confidence: 99%

The racial fix and environmental state formation

Carrillo

2020

Current Sociology

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Theories of the environmental state – treadmill of production and ecological modernization – have dominated discussion of the political economy of environmental change. While the former contends that the state’s mitigation of labor–capital relations engenders ecological instability, the latter posits that the state’s use of business-friendly incentives can goad producers and consumers to adopt sustainable practices. However, these theories largely focus on dynamics related to class, labor, and markets, and thus overlook the role that race and racism play in the political economy. In contrast, this article argues that racial politics are not peripheral influences, but rather are central to the political economy in which environmental policy formation occurs. The author advances the argument with the concept of the racial fix, which refers to the idea that race and racism are mechanisms for circumventing barriers that slow the treadmill of production. Synthesizing long-standing and emerging research, the author outlines three dimensions – spatial, political, and cognitive – that constitute the racial fix. Overall, this article not only shows how race and racism serve as building blocks for environmental state formation, but also articulates new theoretical paths for studying the relationship between race and environment.

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Do 40-Year-Old Facts Still Matter? Long-Run Effects of Federal Oversight under the Voting Rights Act

Cited by 14 publications

References 59 publications

The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act

The Franchise, Policing, and Race: Evidence from Arrests Data and the Voting Rights Act

Ballots Instead of Bullets? The Effect of the Voting Rights Act on Political Violence

The racial fix and environmental state formation

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