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.

Why do cities with similar minority populations vary greatly in the adoption of minority-opportunity districts and, by extension, differ in the number of elected Hispanic and black representatives? Through in-depth research of the districting processes of more than 100 cities, Race, Ethnicity, and the Politics of City Redistricting provides the first nationwide study of minority-opportunity districts at the local level. Joshua G. Behr explores the motives of the players involved, including incumbent legislators, Department of Justice officials, and organized interests, while investigating the roles that segregation, federal oversight, litigation, partisan elections, and resource disparity, among others, play in the election of Hispanics and blacks. Behr's book documents—for both theorists and practitioners—the necessary conditions for enhancing minority-opportunity districts at the local level.

This handbook presents current legal thought on basic political rights of Americans, focusing on statutory law and judicial cases. Bott examines political rights such as the right to vote, the right to be a political candidate and gain ballot access, the right to fair and effective representation, rights under the Federal Voting Rights Act, and the right of people to participate directly in the governing process through initiative, referendum, and recall. He presents the historical background of the right of political expression, the right of political association, the right to know, and the political rights of public officials and employees, and analyzes these rights' current status. He also includes detailed descriptions of Federal and state laws, and tables that offer state-by-state surveys of constitutional and statutory provisions. ISBN 0-313-25935-6 : $75.00 (For use only in the library).

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.