NICEP 17/01: Race, Representation and Policy: Black Elected Officials and Public Spending in the US South

Summary

On August 6 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed The Voting Right Act (VRA) into law defining it as 'one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom' that would 'open the doors to the polling places and ... to the wondrous rewards which await the wise use of the ballot'. The Voting Right Act (VRA) introduced drastic measures known as coverage mandating federal scrutiny over US Southern States with a history of black disenfranchisement. Did coverage trigger significant black representation gains? Surprisingly, the answer to this important question remains largely moot.

Using a novel dataset on the universe of local elected officials, this paper provides causal evidence on the effect of VRA on the racial make-up of US local governments in the immediate aftermath of its introduction. To identify the effect of the act we exploit the fact that a coverage formula was used to place a group of jurisdictions in the South under strict federal monitoring. Using non-covered counties of the former Confederacy as a comparison group, the authors find that larger pre-VRA shares of blacks led to a greater increase in black office holding in the treatment than in the control group. The impact of coverage was stronger in the presence of elections by single member districts. Finally, black representation led to greater provision of local public goods, particularly education.

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Authors

Andrea Bernini, Giovanni Facchini and Cecilia Testa

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