America's Uneven Democracy

Dr Zoltan Hajnal is currently Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Changing White Attitudes Toward Black Leadership (Cambridge University Press, 2006) and his articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Politics, Public Opinion Quarterly, and numerous other journals, edited volumes, and newspaper editorial pages. He was also the winner of the Best Paper in Urban Politics Award at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association.

'This book mines some scholarly terrain that is, to our collective shame, most often ignored. And in this case, I'm convinced that Hajnal has struck gold. He challenges the conventional academic wisdom that varying levels of turnout in elections and, in particular, the 'problem' of low voter turnout isn't much of a problem at all. This conventional wisdom, he argues, misses a very important arena where turnout ought to matter: local elections. The differences between voters and non-voters not in preferences but in their racial and economic makeups should matter most at the local level, in part because the racial makeup of the electorate in most cities is more heterogeneous than the country as a whole, and also because turnout is typically lower in local elections. In fact, as Hajnal demonstrates clearly, local electorates are skewed in favor of the white, the well-educated, and the wealthy.' Paul Kellstedt, Texas A & M University

• Introduction: the vote and democracy; 1. Where turnout should matter; 2. Turnout could matter at the local level; 3. Winners and losers in mayoral elections; 4. Turnout and representation on city councils; 5. Turnout and local government spending priorities; 6. Raising voter turnout; 7. The benefits of expanded participation; Appendix.