Gavin Wright. Sharing the Prize: The Economics of the Civil Rights Revolution in the American South.

Race, Representation, and Local Governments in the US South: The Effect of the Voting Rights Act

“…Consistent with their prediction, our results indicate that the VRA increased the provision of public goods (e.g., capital spending on infrastructure) rather than targeted individual transfers. This finding corroborates the arguments put forward by Wright (2013) that gains achieved by Blacks did not take place at the expense of white Southerners because Black political participation facilitated biracial cooperation toward mutually beneficial goals, including investment on growth-enhancing policies. 13 This "biracial coalition for economic growth" (Wright 2013) might have also played a role in explaining why Black office holders were influential, even though they typically remained a minority group within local elected bodies.…”

“…This finding corroborates the arguments put forward by Wright (2013) that gains achieved by Blacks did not take place at the expense of white Southerners because Black political participation facilitated biracial cooperation toward mutually beneficial goals, including investment on growth-enhancing policies. 13 This "biracial coalition for economic growth" (Wright 2013) might have also played a role in explaining why Black office holders were influential, even though they typically remained a minority group within local elected bodies. To sum up, focusing on local governments, our analysis contributes to the literature by showing that the VRA brought tangible improvements to Black communities in terms of both representation and public spending.…”

“…However, by 1895, most states of the former Confederacy established voting registration procedures to circumvent the Fifteenth Amendment (Kousser 1992). The procedures were brutally effective: by the beginning of the twentieth century, African Americans' disenfranchisement was virtually complete (Wright 2013) and many of their policy gains reversed (Margo 1990;Valelly 2004;Logan 2020). White supremacy, Black economic coercion, and the manipulation of democratic institutions shaped the former Confederacy into an enclave of authoritarian rule (Mickey 2015), which persisted until the mid-1940s.…”

“…Defined by President Lyndon B. Johnson as "one of the most monumental laws in the entire history of American freedom," the VRA abolished obstacles to Black voters' registration (chiefly, literacy test provisions) and put in place special measures-known as coverage-mandating federal scrutiny over Southern states with a history of Black disenfranchisement. 3 The elimination of literacy test provisions led to an immediate and sharp increase in Black voters' registration and turnout, making them a political force to be reckoned with (Wright 2013;Cascio and Washington 2014). But whether Shepsle, Ebonya Washington, Gavin Wright, and Noam Yuchtman as well as seminar audiences at the European University Institute, Harvard University, King's College London, New York University Abu Dhabi, Oxford University, University of Sheffield, University of California San Diego, University of Warwick, York University, the Brunico Political Economy workshop, European Political Science Association (Brussels), the London School of Economics-New York University conference, Midwest Political Science Association (Chicago), and the Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research conference (Nottingham) for useful comments and suggestions.…”

“…Poor schools and inadequate basic infrastructures ( Jones 1917;Valelly 2004) became hallmarks of Southern Black communities. Despite improvements in water supply and sanitation before World War II (Troesken 2004) and in school funding from the 1940s onward (Margo 1990), the gap between Black and white communities in local public goods provision was still large in the early 1960s (Button 1989;Wright 2013). Thus, the election of Black commissioners-besides enhancing descriptive representation of previously disenfranchised African Americanscould fundamentally change their substantive representation in the domain of chronically underprovided local public goods, 8 which were perceived as highly salient.…”