Despite having overwhelming advantage in terms of the size of their populations, the nation's biggest cities are typically hamstrung by their state legislatures. The study, by political scientists Gerald Gammof University of Rochester and Thad Kousser of University of California San Diego, tracks how much worse big-city legislators have been historically at getting their way in state politics. Published in November’s American Political Science Review, the study draws from the authors' unique database of more than 1,700 “district bills” – those that refer to a specific city or county – in state legislatures from 1881 to 2000 in 13 states. Nearly 750 of these bills (747 to be exact) cover the largest city in each state.
The findings are astounding. Comparing the success rates for legislation that affected cities of different sizes, they found “a large, stable gap in passage rates” between bills that affected cities with populations of at least 100,000 and those that dealt with smaller cities and towns. Bills from legislators from small or medium-sized cities were overall twice as likely to pass as ones that originated in big cities like Chicago or New York, the authors found. Over the last century, the passage rates have been 24 to 34 percent lower for big-city legislation.
The drop has been remarkable since the 1940s:
Why? The size the of large city delegations apparently:
. . . the authors found that big-city delegations were just too big. Beginning in the 1960s – during Mailer’s era, not coincidentally – urban political reformers campaigned for a reapportionment of seats in state legislatures across the country, hoping to get urban residents the “one person, one vote” that they deserved. But the ballooning size of city delegations, rather than having a “snowball” effect on their efforts in state legislative contests, may in fact have had unintended consequences. Larger delegations leave far more room for internal disputes, sending unclear messages to potential allies from other parts of the state and, as a result, splintering their ability to get anything done for their urban constituents.
The authors write that “scale exerts its most dramatic effect through the size of big-city delegations. Larger delegations are more likely to be divided along partisan lines and to split over roll-call votes on their own district bills.” The add, “It appears that legislators from the rest of the state follow the cues of the big-city delegation and split when its members divide, often dooming bills.”
The larger the delegation, the more difficult it is to pass bills:
