Boundaries, Redistricting Criteria, and Representation in the U.S. House of Representatives

• DOI: 10.1177/1532673X13519127
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Date: 01 September 2014
• Author: Daniel C. Bowen
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2014, Vol. 42(5) 856 –895

© The Author(s) 2014

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X13519127

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Article

Boundaries,

Redistricting Criteria,

and Representation

in the U.S. House of

Representatives

Daniel C. Bowen1

Abstract

Many U.S. states require redistricting authorities to follow traditional

districting principles (TDPs) like the creation of compact districts and

respecting the integrity of county and town boundaries. Reformers,

academics, and other redistricting experts have long suggested that following

such districting principles may enhance representation. Yet, very few

academic studies have empirically examined these expectations. Using two

measures of geographical compactness and a new measure of respect for

political subdivisions (referred to as coterminosity) created with a geographic

information system (GIS), the connection between district boundaries and

representation is tested. The results show strong evidence that the use of

geographic districting principles can enhance dyadic representation, as more

compact and more coterminous districts are associated with more positive

evaluations of legislative responsiveness and greater citizen-representative

communication. Violating TDPs to advance other goals in redistricting

like strict population equality between districts thus comes with a clear

representational cost.

Keywords

redistricting, representation, traditional districting principles, compactness,

respect for political subdivisions, boundaries

1The College of New Jersey, Ewing, USA

Corresponding Author:

Daniel Bowen, The College of New Jersey, 2000 Pennington Rd, Ewing, NJ 08628, USA.

Email: bowend@tcnj.edu

519127APRXXX10.1177/1532673X13519127American Politics ResearchBowen

research-article2014

Bowen 857

At least once every 10 years in the United States, state legislators, commis-

sioners, and bureaucrats undertake the exhaustive process of drawing and

redrawing legislative district boundaries. As the United States employs

exclusively single-member territorial districts for seats in the House of

Representatives, redistricting is a necessary component of maintaining equal

representation in the face of population movement and change (Gelman &

King, 1994). But equal representation does not necessarily mean good rep-

resentation, and much political effort has been exerted to mold the redistrict-

ing process to incentivize certain representational activities and limit

others.

One such way this has been done is through the adoption of “traditional

districting principles” (TDPs), which codify specific criteria to be used when

drawing district maps. Two such criteria have received much attention from

the courts, reformers, and scholars alike: geographical compactness and

respect for political subdivisions like towns and counties. These TDPs are

explicitly geographic in nature and are required by most U.S. states at either

the subnational or federal levels.

Despite the important role TDPs like compactness play in the redistricting

process in the United States, scant academic attention has been paid to exam-

ining the consequences of their use. While TDPs have received extensive

debate in the redistricting and voting rights literature, nearly all of this work

is focused on expected, not tested, consequences and the desirability of pur-

suing them as a mechanism of redistricting reform. The few studies to attempt

to measure the compactness of legislative districts or respect for political

subdivisions have found, at best, mixed effects. Geographically compact dis-

tricts have been associated only with increased voter turnout (Altman, 1998a;

Engstrom, 2000), but even this effect has been questioned (Engstrom, 2005).

Furthermore, the ability of compactness standards to limit gerrymandering

has been criticized by numerous scholars (Altman, 1998b; Butler & Cain,

1992; Morrill, 1973; Webster, 2013), and compactness standards do not

appear to limit incumbent-protection gerrymanders (Forgette & Platt, 2005).

Perhaps even more importantly, critics charge that compactness standards do

active harm to the quality of representation by producing Republican-biased

districting plans (Altman, 1998b; Lowenstein & Steinberg, 1985) and by

making it more difficult to draw majority-minority districts (Barabas & Jerit,

2004). Respect for political subdivisions is associated with improved con-

stituent knowledge about their member of Congress (MC) (Niemi, Powell, &

Bicknell, 1986; Winburn & Wagner, 2010), and may limit gerrymandering

(Forgette & Platt, 2005; Winburn, 2009) but much of the rationale given for

the TDP has gone untested.

858 American Politics Research 42(5)

This literature, particularly that on compactness, is surprising given that

proponents of TDPs claim that their adoption offers positive representa-

tional benefits for American democracy such as improving representation

of the geographic constituency and strengthening the connection between

citizens and their elected representatives. Thus, the state of redistricting in

the United States is somewhat paradoxical. While mapmakers are often

charged with using geographic TDPs, the empirical rationale for their utili-

zation is, at best, questionable. We need to know much more about the

relationship between the use of redistricting criteria and representation,

broadly construed.

This article examines the relationship between geographic districting prin-

ciples and the experience of representation in congressional districts. The

approach adopted here is purposefully broad: using the 2008 Cooperative

Congressional Election Study (CCES), I identify measures of policy, service,

and allocation responsiveness (Eulau & Karps, 1977) and multiple measures

of the degree of citizen-legislator communication (Jewell, 1982). Respondent

assessments of legislative representation are merged with two congressional

district compactness scores and a new measure of respect for political subdi-

visions referred to here as coterminosity. Using these measures, I examine the

relationship between geographic TDPs and citizen assessments of a variety of

House members’ representational activities.

In accordance with the expectations of reformers and redistricting experts,

I argue that geographic districting can have meaningful, positive effects on

citizen evaluations of and experiences with their elected representatives by

unifying geographically structured shared interests (Morrill, 1982) and by

making districts more recognizable to voters and legislators (Grofman, 1985).

Contrary to previous examinations of TDPs, most notably the research on

compactness, TDPs are found here to have wide-ranging effects on the repre-

sentational relationship.

This article makes a number of important contributions to the study leg-

islative representation and redistricting. First, I develop a new measure of

respect for political subdivisions. Previous ways of measuring the concept

have focused exclusively on the congruence between districts and counties,

but redistricting authorities also follow town and city boundaries, particu-

larly in metropolitan areas. Using GIS, I calculate the proportion of a district

that is coterminous with some other subdivision unit (town, county, or state),

and the measure is valid for both rural and metropolitan areas. The new

score is found to have an empirical pay-off: Coterminosity is associated with

more positive evaluations of MC constituent service and with a greater abil-

ity to recall MC’s efforts to bring projects back to his or her district. Second,

using two different measures of geographic compactness, the results