Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction

Abstract

This paper exploits the history of Reconstruction after the American Civil War to estimate the effect of politician race on public finance. While the effect of black politicians is positive and significant, black officials may be endogenous to electoral preferences for redistribution. I therefore use the number of free blacks in the antebellum era (1860) as an instrument for black political leaders during Reconstruction. Instrumental variables (IV) estimates show that an additional black official increased per capita county tax revenue by $0.20, more than an hour’s wage at the time. The effect was not persistent, however, disappearing entirely once black politicians were removed from office at Reconstruction’s end. Consistent with the stated policy objectives of black officials, I find positive effects of black politicians on land tenancy and black literacy. These results suggest that black political leaders had large effects on public finance and individual outcomes over and above electoral preferences.

Slavery, Reconstruction, and Bureaucratic Capacity in the American South

“…The alternative measure of racialstatus inequality, Free Black, also is not significant at conventional thresholds. Our results reiterate those by Logan (2020), who finds that greater Black representation during Reconstruction was associated with higher taxation. These findings suggest that at least for the first decade after the Civil War, redistributive politics in the American South developed as predicted by political economy models that expect taxation to increase when poorer people gain the right to vote.…”

“…4 Reconstruction-era taxation funded a wide variety of projects, including public schools, hospitals, prisons, and asylums for orphans (Foner 1988, 364;Franklin 1961, 143), as well as restoration work on infrastructure damaged during the war (Beale 1940, 823). 5 As federal oversight diminished, though, white elites worked systematically to roll back Reconstruction-era taxation, including removing pro-taxation Black politicians from state and local offices, amending state constitutions to limit the amount of taxation that could be collected for funding public schools, and severely cutting spending on governance and social services (Logan 2020;Woodward 1971, 59). As Perman writes, "Of all the issues in southern politics during the later 1870s, none matched in importance the relentless pressure for retrenchment and the reduction of the costs of government," including "a significant decrease in taxation" (1984,(228)(229)(230).…”

“…Our findings also contribute to a growing literature on redistributive politics around the Civil War era. Logan (2020), for example, finds that the presence of Black officeholders was associated with increases in county taxation during the Reconstruction era. Our paper complements this account by emphasizing the importance of bureaucratic capacity beyond tax policy per se, as well as by emphasizing how Southern white elites were able to weaken taxation and bureaucratic institutions in the Southern states, even before the enactment of institutional mechanisms such as Jim Crow and suffrage restrictions (Acemoglu and Robinson 2008;Ager 2013;Bertocchi and Dimico 2012).…”

Judicial independence and lynching in historical context: an analysis of US States

“…This result ties in well with Logan's (2020) assertion that black politicians mattered, in so far as, counties, in the 1860s and 1870s, with black politicians were more likely to have larger tax revenues, greater literacy rates for whites and blacks, and higher school enrollments among other things. However, Logan notes that this effect was not consistent as reclaimed control by whites during Redemption led to a decline in tax revenue where blacks held political office.…”

The Costs of Employment Segregation: Evidence from the Federal Government Under Woodrow Wilson

“…Finally, the effects are unlikely to be driven by political correlates of race. Since black Americans in our study period were more likely to be Republican (Logan, 2020), the effects could reflect changes induced by the political turnover that penalized politically misaligned civil servants. While the historical literature does not indicate that the segregation measures were aimed at Republicans (King, 1995;Yellin, 2013), we investigated this possibility by testing whether our main interaction of interest Black × Wilson is attenuated by the inclusion of a proxy for one's party affiliation.…”