Representation and Inequality in Late Nineteenth-Century America
The Politics of Apportionment

This book examines the fierce conflicts over apportionment and gerrymandering in the late nineteenth-century Midwest.

Peter H. Argersinger (Author)

9781107023000, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 29 October 2012

352 pages, 12 tables
23.4 x 15.6 x 2.4 cm, 0.72 kg

'Peter Argersinger offers a powerful narrative, fortified by impeccable research, to show that, even though the battleground has changed, the wars politicians have fought to choose their voters have been going on for far longer than much contemporary scholarship acknowledges. Overall, Representation and Inequality in Nineteenth-Century America is an important and interesting read. The book is well-researched, well-written, and manages to make a topic as potentially dry as historical apportionment procedures into a compelling read … political scientists will take away a great deal from this book, [and] it could easily be read and appreciated by a much larger audience. It would be a valuable addition to any undergraduate or graduate level elections course syllabus.' Chad Murphy, Congress and the Presidency

This book demonstrates that apportionment, although long overlooked by scholars, dominated state politics in late nineteenth-century America, setting the boundaries not only for legislative districts but for the nature of representative democracy. The book examines the fierce struggles over apportionment in the Midwest, where a distinctive constitutional and electoral context shaped their course with momentous consequences. As the major parties alternated in effectively disenfranchising their opponents through gerrymanders, growing tensions challenged established patterns of political behaviour and precipitated intense and even dangerous disputes. Unprecedented judicial intervention overturned gerrymanders in stunning decisions that electrified the public but intensified rather than resolved political conflict and uncertainty. Ultimately, America's political ideal of representative democracy was frustrated by its own political institutions, including the courts, because their decisions against gerrymandering in the 1890s helped parties and legislatures entrench the practice as a basic and profoundly undemocratic feature of American politics in the twentieth century.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. 'Injustices and inequities': the politics of apportionment, 1870–89
2. 'One irrevocable duty': democrats and reapportionment, 1889–93
3. 'The time has come to make a precedent': Wisconsin, 1891–2
4. 'Fought out in the courts': Michigan, 1891–2
5. 'Partisanship has run riot': Indiana, 1892–4
6. 'An ineradicable vice': Wisconsin, 1893–6
7. 'The consequences of their own folly': Indiana, 1894–8
8. 'A state of uncertainty': Illinois, 1893–8
9. 'Our system of representative government': from chaos to control
Appendix
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Politics & government [JP], History of the Americas [HBJK], History [HB]