“Depoliticizing Redistricting”

I just posted this book chapter on redistricting commissions around the world, based on the first ever survey of commission members. It’ll be part of the Comparative Election Law volume that Jim Gardner is editing. The abstract is below:

This chapter sheds light on the operation of redistricting commissions around the world through the first ever survey of commission members. The respondents uniformly testify to the nonpartisanship of their bodies. They attribute this impartiality to (1) the institutional structure of the commissions; (2) the elaborate sets of redistricting criteria used by the commissions; and (3) the powerful norms of political independence cultivated by the commissions. Interestingly, the respondents reject the recent American trend of instructing redistricting authorities to consider election results and to overtly pursue partisan fairness. The respondents prefer not using election results at all in the mapmaking process.

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