Regionalism, Rotten Boroughs, Race, and Realignment: The Seventeenth Amendment and the Politics of Representation

Abstract

Struggles, both political and intellectual, over electoral structures – the legal arrangements, to borrow from Harold Lasswell, of who gets to vote for what, when, and how – are probably as old as democracy. Suffrage, its expansion and contraction, is no doubt the most prominent historical feature in the politics and study of electoral structures. But the “how” and “for what” of voting have also played crucial, though perhaps less understood, roles in the politics of democratization. However important the right of suffrage, political power is also allocated by both the “space,” for lack of a better word, that a vote occupies and affects (for example, districts or at-large) and the object of the vote (for example, representation or a referendum). Electoral structures are the quintessential “mobilization of bias.”E.E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People: a Realist's View of Democracy in America (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960). See also, Benjamin Ginsberg, The Consequences of Consent: Elections, Citizen Control, and Popular Acquiescence (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1982). And they remain, in this era of universal suffrage, an ongoing object of contention even in stable regimes such as the United States.Indeed, few issues have such a consistent legal and political presence at all levels of American government. Most recently, the controversy over majority-minority districts has produced a significant political struggle involving state governments, Congress, the executive branch, and the courts, as well as a rapidly expanding scholarly debate over the rights and wrongs, and causes and effects of forms of minority representation: Abigail M. Thernstrom, Whose Votes Count?: Affirmative Action and Minority Voting Rights (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987); Lani Guinier, The Tyranny of the Majority (New York: Free Press, 1994); Carol M. Swain, Black Faces, Black Interests (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995); David Lublin, The Paradox of Representation: Racial Gerrymandering and Minority Interests in Congress (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997).

Institutional Change and the Electoral Connection in the Senate

“…Comparing House and Senate composition over time, this work has revealed increasing similarities between the House and Senate as senators became both less aristocratic and more politically experienced after the 1914 elections and as the party composition of the two chambers converged (Crook and Hibbing 1997;Stewart 1992). Students of direct election's partisan origins have also produced some evidence of shifting partisan advantage in Senate composition, with Democrats seizing a slight post-1914 advantage from Republicans, who had been advantaged somewhat before reform (King and Ellis 1996; see also King and Ellis 1999;Wirls 1999).…”

“…The history of the Seventeenth Amendment's proposal and ratification has been evaluated in a number of works, including Haynes (1938, esp. 96-117), King andEllis (1996), andWirls (1999). For a concise overview, see Kyvig (2004).…”

The Remaking of an American Senate: The 17th Amendment and Ideological Responsiveness

“…Despite widespread rhetoric by its proponents that the Amendment would alter the behavior of senators, little political science scholarship has assessed its impact on electoral and legislative activity. Instead, analysis of the 17th Amendment focuses mostly on the partisan composition of the Senate (Ellis and King 1999; King and Ellis 1996; Wirls 1999a, 1999b). Additionally, both Crook and Hibbing (1997) and Engstrom and Kernell (2003) find that post‐Amendment Senate election outcomes were more closely related to presidential election results.…”

Agency Problems, the 17th Amendment, and Representation in the Senate

“…26 26 Therefore our results offer only slight evidence for Republican bias before the 17th Amendment and are largely inconclusive for this debate (cf. King and Ellis 1996; Wirls 1999), which is not surprising given that our design is not aimed at this issue. …”