Why Cities Lose, by Jonathan A. Rodden

In reading this book, I not only was annoyed that this is the second book I have read recently which insults my native state for things that are not in fact bad things but are very good things, and also demonstrates a very deep failure to understand something important about the American republic, or indeed any well-functioning republic. While the author supports the malapportionment of electoral districts in order to bias them in favor of urban voters (which the author considers “evening out” the disadvantages of voter concentration and “wasted votes”) as well as proportional voting that leads to coalitions and encourages bare majoritarian tyranny, a better approach for a republic lies in something approximating the Swiss model of requiring a broader consensus that does not depend on only having more votes but also more cantons or areas in favor of legislation, thus discouraging temporary and concentrated majorities from trying to throw their weight around and abuse the wider general public. Unfortunately, the author seems completely unaware of the benefits of requiring more consensus that disregards the fraudulent running up of votes in precincts where there is literally no opposition to the terrible politics of the contemporary extreme left, demonstrating the lack of legitimacy of elections in many cities within the United States, problems which the author does not appear to remotely grasp.

In terms of its contents, this book is a bit less than 300 pages long and it is divided into nine chapters. The book begins with an introduction and then discusses the dilemma of the left (1) related to geography that seeking to appeal to mainstream, pragmatic audiences threatens leftist parties with challenges from more “authentic” and extreme urban parties of the left. The author then discusses the role of the industrial revolution in setting up the current urban crisis of Anglophone leftist parties (2), as well as the transition that the Labour and Democratic parties made from being workers’ parties to urban parties (3). The author discusses urban form and voting (4) as well as complaining about what is wrong with Pennsylvania Democrats (5) and what makes them so unsuccessful at winning control of state legislature seats (by no means a bad thing). The author talks about the role of political geography in the representation of Democrats (6), complaining that being an urban party tends to reduce representation especially where districts must represent the lines of cities and counties to some extent. The author then talks about the battle for the soul of the left (7) and how it is affected by the dilemma between trying to appeal to urban extremists and suburban moderates simultaneously. The author then plugs for proportional representation and comments why it has not attracted more interest from incumbents with safe seats in urban districts (8), as well as a look to the end of the dilemma (9) through various possibilities. The book ends with acknowledgements, notes, and an index.

This book’s title is by no means worthy of 300 pages of turgid and partisan writing arguing that the gerrymandering of the left–which the author freely admits–is justified as a way to balance the scales that geography has against extremist parties of the left whose only appeal is in brainless and morally and politically corrupt urban voters. The short answer to the book’s titular question is that cities and the political parties they vote for lose because they deserve to lose, because urban voters are too slender of a reed to depend on in providing the legitimacy for consensual republican rule, too subject to be stirred up into mob action by demagogues and too prone to domination by corrupt politicians who are able to ensure themselves decades of seniority within political offices in safe seats because of their control of patronage and incumbency benefits. The author’s complaints that the decline in bipartisanship has made life difficult for leftists to secure the majority of votes in national and state districts apportioned in a winner-take-all first-past-the-post system is the whining of a loser who deserves ridicule and political exile. Those who cannot bother to appeal to moderate, to say nothing of conservative voters, do not deserve political office, and certainly do not deserve to have their corruption waved aside as being balancing the scales tipped against them. Those scales are tipped for a good reason, to keep corrupt demagogues from monopolizing political power in our republic. The author should try urging less corruption and less extremism from his fellow travelers on the left, and stop complaining that things are stacked against him and others of his ilk.