In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Samantha Chapa, covers the new article by Joaquín Artés, Aaron R. Kaufman, Brian K. Richter and Jeffrey F. Timmons, “Are Firms Gerrymandered?.“
Do you think politicians are in the pockets of big corporations?
The latest work by Joaquín Artés and his coauthors turns this assumption on its head, revealing a game where politicians may pull the strings. Traditional accounts of the relationship between corporate America and politics argue that firms try to capture politicians to gain power in political processes, lower their taxes, and influence laws and regulations to favor their business operations. Rather than focusing on firms’ efforts to capture politicians, these authors ask whether and why American politicians might seek to place firms in political units they control and the implications of their doing so for democracy.
Incumbent politicians spend considerable effort and money to lure large firms into the political entities they control, whether they are countries, states, cities, or congressional districts. They do so for myriad reasons. Not only are large firms major creators of jobs locally, but they often serve as vital sources of funds for campaigns, offer opportunities for credit-claiming and visibility, access to more powerful politicians, and, in the case of congressional representatives, pathways to coveted congressional committees. Most political boundaries (e.g., countries, states, cities) are essentially fixed, so the only way to bring firms into particular political jurisdictions is to persuade them to move—hence the proliferation of vast location-based subsidies. But US congressional district boundaries, by contrast, are subject to change every 10 years thanks to constitutionally mandated redistricting, which requires lines to be adjusted to account for population changes. This presents state-level mapmakers with opportunities to re-configure the nature of any particular district’s constituency, allowing them to strategically allocate voters in ways that systematically affect election outcomes, a practice known as gerrymandering. The authors extend the focus of gerrymandering to firms, turning the study of gerrymandering into a multi-dimensional problem.
Their analysis sets out a framework for thinking about and detecting seat and firm gerrymandering, taking into account the fact that politicians can gerrymander seat, firms, or both simultaneously.
The authors use precinct-level data and simulations to model the relationship between partisanship, seat, and firm capture across fourteen states, taking into account redistricting’s legal requirements. They conduct 50,000 simulations for 18 districting plans with the headquarter locations of over 2,800 publicly traded firms. They use precinct vote share for the 2012 House of Representative elections—in addition to the average of a precinct’s vote share across four elections—to approximate how vote share and seat capture might change across the simulations. They find that maps drawn by partisan mapmakers tend to allocate a far higher number of firms to their districts than random chance would predict. In states where Democrats draw maps, more firms tend to be allocated in Democratic districts, and the same holds true for Republican states compared to the modal, simulated plan. Less partisan mapmaking bodies, notably independent commissions, by contrast, tend to allocate firms in a much less skewed manner.
“By uncovering the relationship between mapmakers and firm capture, the authors present another reason to believe independent redistricting commissions would ensure a more equitable and representative democracy.”The authors support their quantitative analysis with case studies of Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas. The case studies show how seat and firm gerrymandering might work in practice and illustrate the complexity of identifying seat and firm gerrymandering. They find Oregon is both a seat and a firm gerrymander, as Democrats have captured both the extreme number of seats and firms, though the firm capture may simply be a symptom of seat capture. In this case, it is almost impossible to say that firms were targeted in addition to seats, as the maximum number of possible seats already includes the maximum number of firms. In Pennsylvania, however, the data demonstrate that Republican mapmakers targeted firms beyond seats. Within the realm of possible map allocations, the authors find that once partisans captured as many seats as possible, they attempted to further capture as many firms as possible. In Texas, surprisingly, the data demonstrate that Republicans allowed Democrats more seats than expected, instead locking in existing Republican districts while reducing the number of firms Democrats could represent.
As Artés and his coauthors demonstrate, votes are not the only outcome of value for mapmakers. In addition to holding seats captive, partisans also change district maps to hold firms captive. Their results open the door for a broader theory of gerrymandering that might include other objects of desire, including wealthy residents, political donors, and other geographically based assets. They also raise crucial questions about the relationship between partisan redistricting mapmaking and democratic performance: firm capture by politicians can create a lock-in effect at the state level, as redistricting allows the party in power to capture a disproportionate share of big firms and, therefore, ultimately increases their chances of staying in power. This lock-in effect can distort the relationship between voters and their representatives, especially if politicians choose to prioritize the needs of the firms in their districts over their voters. By uncovering the relationship between mapmakers and firm capture, the authors present another reason to believe independent redistricting commissions would ensure a more equitable and representative democracy.
- Samantha Chapa is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston. Her National Science Foundation-funded research focuses broadly on the political rights and representation of migrants and people of color. Her dissertation examines the impacts of local, urban policies on immigrant and minoritized groups. Her work has been published in the British Journal of Politics and East European Politics and Societies. Prior to graduate school, she worked at BakerRipley—a non-profit—for three years, where she engaged in immigrant legal defense work. She completed her Bachelor’s in English and History at Rice University.
- ARTÉS, JOAQUÍN, AARON R. KAUFMAN, BRIAN K. RICHTER, and JEFFREY F. TIMMONS. 2024. “Are Firms Gerrymandered?”, American Political Science Review, 1-21.
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