Some evidence of the good effects of political competition

I observed last week that lack of political competition should concern us more. Here's a working paper that finds that the increase in political competition in the post-Voting Rights Act South demonstrably improved political and economic outcomes.

Comments

[Kyle N]

I don't mean to be a snark but that article is silly. The voting rights act did NOTHING to stop the Democratic party machine because at the same time that it came about, Blacks began voting about 95% for Democrats. I remember in Louisiana in the early 1970's seeing the Democrat machine workers picking up the poor blacks and bringing them to the poll station, handing them a ballot with the right candidates checked, and a five dollar bill.
The reason the South began to turn republican is because the Democratic party turned away from the values of middle America. Ronald Reagan taught millions of southerners they could leave the party.

[Andy]

Kyle,
The nice thing about economic models is that they can sometimes help challenge our notions. For instance, you assume that the pre-VRA Dems had the same policies as the post-VRA Dems. Isn't it possible that, to stem the possibility of the Republicans seizing opportunity, the Dems altered their policies to better support new economic models?

Of course, if that's true, maybe the correlation in the paper between landowners and partisanship is more interesting.