| In three essays, my dissertation examines how political boundaries might be manipulated or exploited to enhance or diminish influence over political outcomes. The first essay, "Political Concentration and Legislative Success: One Case of Soda and One Case of Beer," estimates how the dispersion of a commercial industry across U.S. congressional districts, and the concentration of employees within each district, affects the likelihood that the industry in question will be successful in pushing favorable legislation through the House of Representatives. The results indicate a strong, positive relationship between member support and the number of employees in a member's district. They also suggest that the probability of legislative success is maximized by an unequal distribution of employees across districts. The second essay, "The Strategic Use of Prisons in Partisan Gerrymandering," measures the extent to which redistricters take prison populations into account when attempting to create a partisan electoral advantage. My analysis shows that prison populations do, in fact, shift systematically from districts controlled by one party to districts controlled by the other when there is a switch in partisan control from one census to the next. The third essay, "Macroregional Borders and State Boundaries in Late Imperial China," evaluates the degree to which bureaucratic borders were set to dilute the political influence of local elites in late imperial China. The essay illustrates how administrative boundaries were set to straddle macroregions and dissect their economic cores. It also demonstrates that the potential authority, influence, and wealth of merchants and gentry were further suppressed by administrative rules and market regulations designed to prevent collusion and make these actors more responsible to political units that were poorly aligned with their web of economic activity. |
