Person:

Schneer, Benjamin

What impact do mass civil society groups have on public policy? We study this issue by analyzing opposition to national prohibition by German-American groups and associations in the early twentieth century, before and after state-sponsored suppression of them that coincided with U.S. entry to World War I. We measure German-American civil society and organizational strength across time and geography based on historical club directories, newspaper directories and petitioning activity. Comparing votes in the House of Representatives on two near-identical proposals for constitutional amendments—the defeat of the Hobson Prohibition Amendment in 1914 and the successful passage of the eventual Eighteenth Amendment in 1917—we find suppression mattered most in districts located at the middle of the German-American population distribution, where we hypothesize representatives were most persuadable. We estimate that without suppression of German-American organizations the Prohibition Amendment would not have received enough support for passage. Our findings add to an understanding of when and under what circumstances groups and organizations successfully influence public policy and provide a new explanation for the passage of the Prohibition Amendment.

Redistricting reformers have proposed many solutions to the problem of partisan gerrymandering but they all require either bipartisan consensus or the agreement of both parties on the legitimacy of a neutral third party to resolve disputes. In this paper we propose a new method for drawing district maps, the Define-Combine Procedure, that substantially reduces partisan gerrymandering without requiring a neutral third party or bipartisan agreement. One party defines a map of 2N equal-population contiguous districts. Then the second party combines pairs of contiguous districts to create the final map of N districts. Using real-world geographic and electoral data, we use simulations and map-drawing algorithms to show that this procedure dramatically reduces the advantage conferred to the party controlling the redistricting process and leads to less biased maps without requiring cooperation or non-partisan actors.

Legislative leaders tend to be ideologically more extreme than their median members. Why? This paper shows that party members select extreme leaders as a strategic measure to anchor negotiations. Anchoring succeeds because the opposition understands that such leaders will not compromise on moderate legislation. Hence, rank-and-file members balance their own ideologies, and their assessments of political feasibility and institutional conditions, to select leaders who will pull agreements towards the ideal point of their median party member. Congressional voting data since 1900 confirms this account. When parties have selected extreme leaders, passed legislation aligns more closely with the preferences of the median caucus member. Party members also acknowledge the benefits of extreme leaders, referring to them more positively in newsletters sent to constituents. Such extremeness has the consequence, however, that less legislation gets passed. Additional comparative statics align with an account where institutional conditions can constrain the extremeness of leaders selected.