We trace the origin of felony disenfranchisement from the colonial period through Reconstruction. On the eve of the Civil War, three-quarters of states had criminal disenfranchisement statutes. These laws were based on “legal moralism” principles, which limited the franchise to those in good standing with the community. Efforts at disenfranchisement grew as access to the ballot increased and criminal justice reforms replaced capital and corporal punishment for imprisonment. We highlight important transformations in felony disenfranchisement during Reconstruction, specifically in new state constitutions and the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. All but one Southern state included felon disenfranchisement in their new constitutions that the Republican-controlled Congress ratified for readmission to the United States. Radical Republicans in Congress and state legislatures were in most cases advocates of felony disenfranchisement to exclude former Confederates from political participation.

Objective: We examine the role of local election officials in voter suppression of Native Americans and opportunities for legal redress using state law. Methods: We present a case study of the Shoshone and Paiute Tribal leaders, Native activists, and lawyers in Elko County, Nevada, to provide electoral access on the Duck Valley Reservation. Results: We document the successful legal strategy against Elko County officials in state court following a newly adopted provision of the state constitution that committed Nevada to providing “equal access to the elections system without discrimination.” Conclusion: This case study is a reminder of the discretionary power wielded by local election officials in the United States, and it presents a potential roadmap for fighting voting abuses using state laws and courts following the Supreme Court’s Brnovich v. Democratic Central Committee (2021) ruling.

Reductions in premature mortality are widely attributed to economic, educational, and medical factors. This study contributes to our understanding of the influence of political factors in preventing early death and gender inequalities in health outcomes. We analyze data from life tables of the World Health Organization, 2000– 2015, to estimate the annual, sex-specific standard deviation of the age-at-death distribution across 162 countries. We apply dynamic panel model analyses to assess the association between political liberalization and inequalities in premature mortality. Our findings show reduced inequalities in premature mortality in liberal democracies, with men benefiting disproportionately. We theorize that liberal democracy may motivate governments to respond to citizens’ desires for policies that improve health and reduce risks. As democratic liberalization increases, premature mortality falls for men, which may be accounted for in part by reduced male mortality from injuries. Reductions in premature mortality for women appear to stem primarily from improvements in maternal mortality across regime types. Our findings support the idea that democratization may provide public health benefits, especially for male citizens.

During the 2020 election, voting by mail greatly expanded due to concerns with COVID-19. While voting by mail is relatively easy for most individuals, who have United States Postal Service (USPS) residential mail service, it is much more difficult for those with nonstandard mail service. In this article, we examine how decisions made by the USPS in the latter part of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have resulted in deeply entrenched structural inequities in the access to mail services on the Navajo Nation in Arizona when compared to rural nonreservation communities. Most (89 percent) of current Post Offices were established during the settler colonial period, during which sites were chosen primarily to advance military objectives and serve the interests of Anglo-American settlers. The resulting inequitable pattern of postal access remains, resulting in inferior mail service on the Navajo Nation and adversely impacting many aspects of life. Post Offices are fewer and farther from each other on reservation communities; there are fewer service hours; and we show in a mail experiment that letters posted on reservations are slower and less likely to arrive. This research fits within the growing body of American political development research on path-dependent processes and “spatial racism” within geography.

Recent accounts of American politics focus heavily on urban–rural gaps in political behavior. Rural politics research is growing but may be stymied by difficulties defining and measuring which Americans qualify as “rural.”We discuss theoretical and empirical challenges to studying rurality.Much existing research has been inattentive to conceptualization and measurement of rural geography. We focus on improving estimation of different notions of rurality and provide a new dataset on urban–rural measurement of U.S. state legislative districts. We scrutinize construct validity and measurement in two studies of rural politics. First, we replicate Flavin and Franko (2020, Political Behavior, 845–864) to demonstrate empirical results may be sensitive to measurement of rural residents. Second, we use Mummolo and Nall’s (2017, The Journal of Politics, 45–59) survey data to show rural self-identification is not well-captured with objective, place-based classifications, suggesting a rethinking of theoretical and empirical accounts of rural identity. We conclude with strategies for operationalizing rurality using readily available tools.

An emergency legal injunction in Nevada granted two Indian reservations on-site early voting locations in the 2016 general election. These locations were two of four remote reservations participating in an academic survey to examine Native attitudes toward government and voting. The granting of only two locations out of the four creates reasonable conditions to treat the four cases as a natural experiment in on-site early voting. These cases also add to very limited existing knowledge about factors affecting voting behavior on Indian reservations and the impact of early voting sites in rural locations. We find that on-site early voting substantially increased voter turnout in the general election on the two reservations that received access in comparison to the two without satellite voting. We find little evidence that the reservations that received the voting sites were particularly likely to have high turnout in 2016. These findings provide supportive evidence that reducing the cost of voting by providing convenient locations and longer periods to cast a ballot increases voter turnout, including in groups with limited means to vote and low government trust.

We argue that fiscal decentralisation is one important explanation for variation in dis- tributive outcomes following the Great Recession. Using a difference in differences approach, we examine how fiscal decentralisation mediated the link between spatial distribution, redistributive effort, and interpersonal inequality in 21 OECD cases in the years following the Great Recession. We find that fiscally decentralised nations saw increased interpersonal inequality and lower redistribution, but lower inter-regional inequality. We attribute these results to the weaker redistributive mechanisms in fiscally decentralised nations, which increased interpersonal inequality while preserving market-driven productivity declines in high productivity areas that temporary increased regional convergence.

Political scientists are increasingly interested in the geographic distribution of political and economic phenomena. Unlike distribution measures at the individual level, geographic dis- tributions depend on the “unit question” in which researchers choose the appropriate political sub-division to analyze, such as nations, sub-national regions, urban and rural areas, or elec- toral districts. We identify concerns with measuring geographic distribution and comparing distributions within and across political units. In particular, we highlight the potential for threats to inference based on the modifiable areal unit problem (MAUP) whereby measuring concepts at different unit aggregations alters the observed value. We offer tangible options for researchers to improve their research design and data analysis to limit the MAUP. To help manage measurement error when the unit of observation is unclear, or appropriate data are not available, we introduce a new measure of geographic distribution that accounts for fluctuations in the scale and number of political units considered. We demonstrate using Monte Carlo sim- ulations that our measure is more reliable and stable across political units than commonly used indicators because it reduces measurement fluctuations associated with the MAUP.

We examine the distribution of economic productivity across sub-national regions as a factor explaining the level and allocation of central government expenditure. As regional productivity becomes more dispersed, the preferences influencing national decision-making should diverge, thus impeding agreement to expand the central state. However, if regional productivity becomes more right-skewed, an increasing number of less productive regions may be able to press for greater central outlays. Dispersion and skew of inter-regional inequality also shape the allocation of centralized spending. With growing economic dispersion across regions, decision-makers are more likely to agree to fund policy categories that aid qualified citizens in all regions over those that are locally-targeted. By contrast, with the distribution of regional productivity skewing farther to the right, central expendi- ture is likely to become more locally-targeted. We find strong evidence for these propositions in error correction models using new measures of inter-regional inequality and government policy priorities for a sample of 24 OECD countries.

This paper exploits an original database that spans 30-plus developed and developing nations between 1870 and 2010 to perform the first empirical analysis of the relationship between historical levels of intra-elite competition and fiscal development over the long run. We argue that the timing of industrialization affects the extent of historical competition between agricultural and capitalist elites, which in turn helps shape key initial decisions over fiscal size and structure. Under “early” industrialization, intra-elite competi- tion levels tended to be greater, promoting fiscal development characterized by high overall taxation and tax progressivity. Under “late” industrialization, by contrast, agricultural elites were more likely to retain political dominance, promoting fiscal states characterized by low overall taxation and tax regressivity. We show evidence for a positive, statistically signifi- cant, and robust relationship between historical intra-elite competition levels and long-run fiscal development. This focus on intra-elite competition improves our understanding of the fundamental determinants of cross-national fiscal differences today.

We establish a conceptual and empirical link between the geographic distribution of economic endowments within a nation and long-run fiscal capacity. Economic geog- raphy informs elites’ incentives to facilitate large-scale central taxing bureaucracies. Sectoral economic advantage also provides them with leverage to transform these state-building incentives into policy and stable institutional equilibria. We argue that unequal economic endowments across the geography of a nation exacerbate distributive tensions. Political disagreement over the size and the scope of the state hinder centralized investments in state capacity to collect taxes. Using detailed sub-national data and indicators of geographic distribution, we demonstrate global patterns of sub-national economic geography, and how these patterns are related to sub-national variation in economic productivity. We show that divergence in sub-national economies varies across the world and is related to predictable differences in the size of the fiscal state.

Trade liberalization has reduced trade tax revenue in most less developed countries (LDCs). The options to replace this tax, which has historically been LDCs’ primary source of tax revenue, are limited by competitive pressures in the global economy. Using time-series error correction models, we assess how partisan politics shaped the reallocation of taxes in thirty-eight LDCs from 1975 to 2009. We argue that leftist governments have a vested interest in recovering lost revenue to fund spending that benefits their constituencies but they are highly constrained by the market signaling effects of increasing taxes. We find that leftist governments retained higher levels of falling tax revenue and offset trade tax losses with progressive personal income taxes (PITs). Nonetheless, leftist governments appeared reluctant to increase revenue from corporate income or social security taxes, which impose costs on business. To make up for the trade revenue loss, leftists instead relied more heavily on regressive consumption taxes, which are the most lucrative and market-friendly supplements to preferred PIT. Leftist parties in LDCs demonstrate redistributive concerns, but their tools and the lasting effects of their reforms are limited by strong market constraints.

Latin America’s largest federations have significantly reduced their levels of income inequality in recent years, perhaps reflecting a structural change toward egalitarianism. However, we argue that the political geography of federalism in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico strongly shapes preferences against centralized redistribution likely to promote equity in the long term. While federalism does not necessary lead to lower redistribution in theory, the geographic spread of income and malapportioned political institutions limit egalitarianism in these nations. These dynamics help explain why fiscal structures are distinct in Latin American federations as compared to federations in high-income countries. First, we show that the territorial structure of inequality and malapportionment are associated with lower redistributive effort in the global context and that the Latin American federations have extreme values for both variables. Second, using a new data set of income distributions within and across Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico over time, we demonstrate that the conditions that favor fiscal transfers from the national to subnational governments are consistently strong, but conditions are rarely favorable for centralized policies to equilibrate national income. Unequal income patterns are reinforced by legislative malapportionment, which encourages interregional transfers to regions and limits the political voice of more populated and unequal regions that would benefit from centralized redistribution.

Governments have incentives to misreport their economic productivity to advance their political goals. These incentives have long been understood, but the validity of government data has been difficult to estimate in the absence of viable external estimates. Using historic Defense Meteorological Satellite Program's Operational Linescan System nightlights imagery we corroborate reports that Panama's government data has been increas- ingly politicised since the handover of the Panama Canal on 31 December 1999. The Canal Handover represents a “natural experiment” in which the production of government data changed in Panama for reasons separate from the desire to manipulate that data. The amount of light a country produces at night, known as nightlight production, has been shown to strongly correlate with GDP. Using subnational Panamanian nightlight pro- duction from 1996 to 2012, we detect a significant divergence between the relationship of subnational reported GDP and nightlights before the Canal handover (when the U.S.A. was very involved in their statistical agencies) and the correlation after the handover (with no U.S. involvement). Our results indicate that between 2000 and 2012, Panama reported approximately 19% more GDP than what was expected by their nightlight production from 2000 to 2012, or a total of around 40 billion U.S. dollars. Our results suggest governments may engage in political manipulation of government statistics to improve the appearance of government performance. While indirect data can never definitely confirm economic phenomena, this analysis presents a unique research design and application of historic satellite imagery to corroborate reports of GDP misreporting.

Political institutions strongly influence incentives to tax. In this article, I examine differences across national regimes in provincial taxation in Argentina from 1959–2001 and compare them to sub- national regimes under national democracy. I argue that elections fundamentally shape taxation by guiding career incentives of provincial leaders. Under autocratic regimes, sub-national leaders have strong moti- vation to tax because they answer to national leaders who reward extrac- tion. I find that national autocrats tax at higher levels, using more difficult taxes. In democratic systems, governors judged by local constituents use political resources to avoid taxation. Governors in closed electoral regimes generally collect less tax revenue than governors in competitive provinces, but this effect is largely driven by national coalition-building and privileged access to national resources. An important difference across sub-national regime type is incidence – closed provinces extract disproportionately from the dependent business sector.

State capacity is a key concept for research in public policy and political science. Despite its importance, there is no broadly accepted measure of state capacity in the existing literature, and frequently used measures of capacity have not been examined for their validity. We begin with an explicit definition of state capacity – the state’s ability to implement public policy – and connect this definition to a measurable outcome of state capacity – the state’s taxation of income. We show that this measure, income taxes as a percentage of total tax revenue, is a useful indicator of state capacity and meets higher standards of measurement validity than other tax-based indicators. We also compare our measure to the most common existing indicators of state capacity to show that income taxation is a better theoretical and statistical measure of states’ effectiveness in policy implementation.

In this Element, we investigate how economic geography, the distribution of subnational economic endowments within a nation, shapes long-run patterns of inequality through its impact on the development of fiscal capacity. We present an argument that links economic geography to capacity through different types of industrialization processes. We show how early industrializers shape spatial distributions domestically by investing in productivity across their nations, and externally by reinforcing spatial polarization among late industrializers. We also show how differences in economic geography impact the process of capacity building, setting the stage for the modern politics of redistribution discussed in Volume II. We support this argument with descriptive data, case studies, and cross-national analyses.

Numerous scholars have noticed that certain political institutions, including federalism, majoritarian electoral systems, and presidentialism, are linked to lower levels of income redistribution. This book offers a political geography explanation for those observed patterns. Each of these institutions is strongly shaped by geography and provides incentives for politicians to target their appeals and government resources to localities. Territorialized institutions also shape citizens’ preferences in ways that can undermine the national coalition in favor of redistribution. Moreover, territorial institutions increase the number of veto points in which anti-redistributive actors can constrain reform efforts. These theoretical connections between the politics of place and redistributive outcomes are explored in theory, empirical analysis, and case studies of the USA, Germany, and Argentina.