Two experts on political representation, voting rights, and the election process debate the most pertinent issues of electoral reform and assess them in the context of the Founders' vision of representation and minority rights. Mark E. Rush and Richard L. Engstrom discuss the promises and pitfalls of electoral reform--specifically, the merits of converting from the traditional single-member district to some form of proportional representation. The authors examine the shortcomings of the existing methods of elections (such as gerrymandering, low turnout, voter apathy, and underrepresentation of minorities and women), debate the merits of converting to proportional representation, ask whether it would address the imperfections of the current system, and investigate the extent to which proportional representation adheres to the Founders' (particularly Madison's) plan for representation. With an introduction by esteemed political scientist Bruce E. Cain, this is an essential text for courses in voting rights and behavior, elections, and American political thought.

The issue of fair representation will take center stage as U.S. congressional districts are reapportioned based on the 2000 Census. Using U.S. history as a guide, the authors develop a theory of fair representation that establishes various principles for translating state populations—or vote totals of parties—into a fair allocation of congressional seats. They conclude that the current apportionment formula cheats the larger states in favor of the smaller, contrary to the intentions of the founding fathers and compromising the Supreme Court's "one man, one vote" rulings. Balinski and Young interweave the theoretical development with a rich historical account of controversies over representation, and show how many of these principles grew out of political contests in the course of United States history. The result is a work that is at once history, politics, and popular science. The book—updated with data from the 1980 and 1990 Census counts—vividly demonstrates that apportionment deals with the very substance of political power.

In Representation Rights and the Burger Years, political scientist Nancy Maveety tackles the constitutional meaning of "fair and effective" representation rights and evaluates the specific contributions that the Supreme Court made to this definition during the Burger era. The Court of Chief Justice Warren Burger has been described as one that made no distinctive jurisprudential contributions. It has been dismissed as a court overshadowed by both its predecessor and its successor. By contrast, Maveety argues that the Burger Court in fact revolutionized constitutional understandings of political representation, expanding, in particular, the judicial scrutiny of political institutions. Moving beyond the "one person, one vote" reapportionment initiated by the Warren Court, it opened the way for the articulation of group-based constitutional representation rights. This group-based approach to representation questions broadened groups' constitutional claims to equal political influence. Yet, as Maveety perceptively shows, this broader interpretation of "representable interests" was grounded in mainstream American conceptions of political representation. The great value of Maveety's study is the presentation of a "typology of group representation," which explains and validates the Burger Court's work on representation rights. This typology, drawn from American history, political theory, and political practice, offers a new approach for evaluating the precedental record of the Burger years and a sophisticated framework for understanding the interaction between constitutional law and politics.

"A Common Cause report on state and congressional reapportionment."--T.p.

Confronting a fundamentally important but often neglected reality in American politics, this book shows the powerful influence of the courts in determining the shape and operation of our politics. The author exhaustively details how the Supreme Court has impoverished the constitutional standing of political parties in areas of redistricting, campaign finance, ballot access, patronage, and party primaries, opting instead for superficially appealing notions of group-based representation. Ryden demonstrates how the Supreme Court, by checking virtually everything undertaken by the more "political" branches, of government, has exerted powerful influence on how the political system operates and how politics plays out at the most practical level. The book details the Court's attraction to group-based approaches to representation currently in vogue and offers persuasive evidence that while well-intended,such approaches only feed the crisis of representation afflicting this country. These approaches, Ryden aruges, compartmentalize and separate out those being represented rather than cultivate a more unified, inclusive, and ultimately healthier scheme of representation. This compelling indictment of the Supreme Court's constitutional theory of representation offers a much-needed prescription for how the Court might better perform its role as ultimate guardian of representative government.

Many observers of American politics believe that representative government, particularly in the Congress, is failing. This book examines the case for failure: what are the outward signs, and how do they reflect breaches of underlying norms of fair and effective representation? The book argues that good representation demands healthy competition between parties, but that in today's America, that competition has run off the rails.