The New Racial Calculus: Electoral Institutions and Black Representation in Local Legislatures

In this study we revisit the question of black representation on city councils and school boards using a novel substantive and methodological approach and longitudinal data for a sample of over 300 boards and councils. Conceptualizing black representation as a two-stage process, we fit Mullahy’s hurdle Poisson models to explain whether and to what extent blacks achieve representation in local legislatures. We find that while the size of the black population and electoral arrangements matter more than ever, especially for overcoming the representational hurdle, the extent to which the black population is concentrated is also strongly associated with black council representation. Further, whereas black resources and opportunities to build “rainbow” coalitions with Latinos or liberal whites are marginally if at all related to black legislative representation, we find that legislative size is an underappreciated mechanism by which to increase representation, particularly in at-large systems, and is perhaps the best predictor of moving towards additional representation. O ver the past several decades, social scientists interested in questions of race and representation in American politics have paid considerable attention to black representation on city councils and local school boards. These investigations have focused almost exclusively on two explanatory factors: the voting strength of the black population and local electoral institutions.Thisfocusispredicatedonconventionalassumptionsthatgivenachoice,blackvoterspreferelectingblack candidates and that blacks come closer to achieving proportional representation as their share of the electorate increases. Electoral institutions are believed to condition the “seats/population” relationship with at-large election (AL) systems impeding the election of minorities, particularly in the South where racial voting has been most