With shrewd insights, Rodden, a professor of political science at Stanford, lays out a compelling, intricate, and meticulously documented case for the geographic basis of contemporary political strife ... A study of the political history of Reading, Pennsylvania, since 1877 adds texture and context, as does the book’s frequent references to the UK, Canada, and Australia, which have similar systems and face similar challenges. Surprisingly, Rodden makes little of another element of American antidemocratic politics—racial barriers to voting. Yet he does offer a powerful, well-developed perspective on the nature of our contemporary politics, and compelling suggestions to fix it.
Rodden, a political scientist at Stanford, shows convincingly...that Democrats would be at a disadvantage even if partisan gerrymandering were abolished. Neutral computer simulations still tend to give Democrats a smaller share of seats than Republicans would receive with the same share of votes ... Rodden’s analysis is particularly useful for understanding the choices facing today’s urban-based parties of the left, including the Democrats, as they try to overcome entrenched disadvantages ... Proportional representation isn’t yet an idea that most reform-minded Americans have considered. Rodden’s Why Cities Lose should start people talking about it.
Filling his book with maps and charts, the author excels in analyzing the historical roots of urban political movements. In perhaps the most fascinating section, Mr. Rodden presents maps of 19th-century railroad nodes and shows that the past presence of those steam-age crossings strongly correlates with Democratic Party vote shares today ... The exact mechanics that Mr. Rodden proposes for this particular phenomenon are a bit vague ... With luck, books like Why Cities Lose might provoke both parties to recognize that our electoral system has always rewarded politicians that strive to build a politically diverse coalition.
Rodden demonstrates that a tension between center-left and far-left movements is a consistent feature of first-past-the-post electoral systems, where the candidate tallying the most votes in a district wins ... Rodden’s focus on the geographical divide, though important, leads him to overlook other dimensions of the political puzzle...oversimplifying the heterogeneous political interests of suburbia, where the majority of Americans reside. Rodden would have strengthened his argument if he had explained how, precisely, urban living seems to lead to progressive values.
Rodden...looks beyond gerrymandering and voter suppression to offer a nuanced understanding of the Democratic Party's inability to maintain majority representation despite consistently winning popular votes ... Rodden's well-researched narrative offers critical insights ... Many will find this helpful in explaining how the Republican and Democratic parties have grown so partisan, and may also serve to illuminate potential reforms that could alleviate urban-rural polarization ... A timely and critical work that explains the ramifications of operating a winner-take-all election approach in U.S. state and federal districting.
In this data-dense book, the author takes a deep look at the familiar urban-rural political divide, examines its implications for democracy (not good), and suggests ways to reduce polarization. He also shows how similar patterns affect elections in other Western democracies. In an intriguing section, he traces the roots of the American divide to the era of labor unrest before World War I, when left-leaning workers lived in urban working-class neighborhoods ... Valuable for specialists and political journalists.
...[an] insightful but dry work ... Rodden dives deeply into the historical context and patterns, concluding that ending underrepresentation of city dwellers will probably require redistricting or proportional representation. This polished and data-heavy examination will interest serious political enthusiasts, academics, and data geeks, but probably not the general reader.
