Election Rules and Representation in U.S. Local Government
Sarah Anzia, Professor
Public Policy
Applications for Fall 2025 are closed for this project.
In the wake of the events of Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, the descriptive and substantive under-representation of minorities in local governments has become an issue of pressing concern. Reformers and litigators have focused almost exclusively on the notion that minority representation is a simple matter of creating minority-majority districts. While this traditional remedy might help under some conditions, such as cities with highly stable populations and historic minority neighborhoods, there is a strong possibility it may not work as well in rapidly changing metro areas. In many American cities, Black residents have been leaving the city center and moving to suburbs. Some suburban areas have become racially heterogeneous, and others have come to have large Black majorities. In such contexts, single-member districts could actually constrain the growth of minority representation, particularly if minority candidates hail from only a limited set of neighborhoods. This study explores the conditions under which descriptive and substantive minority representation can be achieved in the context of ongoing Black suburbanization, paying special attention to two of the most important electoral systems used for local governance in the United States: multi-seat at-large and single-member district plurality.
The project involves a large-scale data collection effort combining population demographics, candidate characteristics, institutional structure, and policy outcomes for each of the 88 municipalities and 22 school districts of St. Louis County, Missouri, from 1970 to the present. We are also conducting surveys of St. Louis County voters, elected officials, and past candidates. These are designed to learn about candidate motivations and recruitment and to determine voters’ substantive concerns with municipal and school board governance. We will use these data to identify the conditions under which minorities run for local office and are successful as well as the conditions under which descriptive representation leads to substantive representation.
Role: The apprentices working on this project will help with the candidate data collection. Working with a master list of candidates for city and school district offices from the 1970s to 2025, the apprentices will collect information on their addresses, race, gender, and whether they won or lost. For the 1970s-2000s, this will likely require research in historical newspaper archives. Apprentices may also be asked to collect data on city and school board policies and outcomes (such as the racial composition of local police forces) to enable analysis of substantive representation. By working on this project, apprentices will learn about the political history of St. Louis County, the drivers of political ambition in local government, and the effects of election rules such as districted elections.
Apprentices will meet with Sarah Anzia every 1-2 weeks.
Qualifications: Apprentices should be organized, detail-oriented, committed to helping with the project 6 hours per week, and interested in U.S. local politics.
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: Students will meet on-campus for meetings every 1-2 weeks but are otherwise free to work remotely.
Related website: http://
Social Sciences