Black Resources and City Council Representation

Local Politics and Violent Crime in U.S. Cities*

“…Finally, nonpartisan local elections depress voter turnout (Alford and Lee, 1968;Karnig andWalter, 1977, 1983).…”

“…As discussed above, extant research suggests that partisan systems favor somewhat greater physical representation of poor and minority city council candidates (Welch and Bledsoe, 1988) and increase voter turnout (Alford and Lee, 1968;Karnig andWalter, 1977, 1983). Research also suggests that partisanship enhances the responsiveness of local officials to citizen concerns (Hansen, 1975;Shumaker and Getter, 1983).…”

“…Previous research in urban politics limited samples to cities with 5% or 10% black populations assuming that blacks must make up a sufficient proportion of the electorate to obtain the threshold of support necessary for election (e.g. Karnig, 1979;Karnig and Welch, 1982;Welch, 1990). This appears to be unduly restrictive because 26 cities with less than 5% black populations and 61 cities with less than 10% black populations in the current sample had black city council members.…”

The New South and Black Economic and Political Development: Changes From 1970 To 1980

“…There have been numerous studies using measures such as the ones devised in this research (e.g. Campbell and Feagin 1975;Cole 1974;Karnig 1976Karnig , 1979aKramer 1971;Miley 1974;Robinson and Dye 1978;Sloan 1969;and Preston 1982). Our measures -all concerning slightly different aspects of black electoral representation in municipal officeassess whether blacks held mayoral or council offices, how many blacks sat on the city council, what percentage of the council was black, and how proportional (or equitable) black council representation was when standardized by the size of the black population in the city.…”

African‐americans‘ Educational Characteristics and Political Representation in Mississippi

“…Latimer (1979), for example, found that neither education nor income had a significant effect on African-American representation. Of these two socioeconomic factors, income appears to have a stronger influence on the presence of African-American elected officials (Robinson, England, and Meier 1985;Engstrom and McDonald 1981;Karnig 1979a). Stewart, England, and Meier (1989) found that the educational resources of the African-American did not significantly affect their representation.…”