Quality of Representative-Democracy

The Role and Position of Undergraduate Students in Local Electoral Politics

The following observation served as the initial motivating idea: College students seem to occupy a socioeconomic position somewhere between the established land owning which makes up municipal boards core constituency and that of renters/day workers.

This observation lead to two motivating questions: How does the presence of college students effect local political institutions/the distribution or political power as well as the quality of democracy and effectiveness of representation at the local level.

I believe that the answers to these questions would help explain the political role students play in the provision of services at the local level: how many towns have bus systems, more affordable housing, and similar conditions that benefit the majority while drawing the ire of the people oftentimes seen as the core constituents of municipal governments.

The reason I think this research is important is because it could help elucidate the role of elected officials and their responsibilities regarding non-voters. The idea of representative-democracy relies on the idea that elected officials are single minded seekers of re-election (Mayhew 1974) as as such are directly responsive to the interests of the the engaged public, not the public writ large (Dahl 1954). However, most every elected official would agree they have a responsibility to at least some non-voters such as children if not undocumented immigrants, day workers, etc…

The intuition behind this project is that college students bring massive benefits to municipal governments which has been well documented in previous town-gown literature: College students increase the census recorded population of host communities thus increasing federal and state spending in those areas as well as the massive amount of state and federal funding (traditionally) pulled in by the institutions themselves. Further, municipalities generally prefer to raise sales taxes rather than property taxes for the exact reason that non-voters/lower propensity voters (high school students, day-workers, vacationers) pay sales tax reducing the burden on the landed core-constituency, in this case, this can be further extended due to the presence of college students. Further it would be difficult for suburbanites to entirely dismiss the future benefits of college students mainly being that they will benefit from more people vying for the limited housing stock and paying into social security at higher rates, etc… These are ways in which college students are particularly beneficial to the landed core-constituency but there are plenty of reasons that core-constituency opposes colleges. These complaints are best summarized by the fact that college students are still at their core generally low income renters, a class of individual oftentimes seen as an existential threat to the landed class. This it what leads me to conclude that college students occupy a class position which is somewhere between low income renters and home owners.

I posit that college students effect political institutions in the following ways: Firstly, college students will oftentimes form student papers focused on the university and municipal governments and secondly, the college/university is itself a local government. Colleges employ massive amounts of public works employees, administrative staff, etc… and oftentimes form Intergovernmental Agreements with the local government for determining issues such as policing, utilities, infrastructure maintenance, service provision, etc… Further, students eventually graduate and some will remain in the host community potentially becoming important political actors. These necessarily mean that college students will in some ways indirectly effect political institutions and the distribution of political power.

There is supposedly no taxation without representation and as previously mentioned, students pay plenty of sales taxes that would otherwise be paid for via property taxes, so where is the representation for college students in the local government? The fact that college students are low propensity voters where those that do vote in municipal elections, are split between their home towns and their host town. It is reasonable to suspect that students that do vote in local elections generally opt to not change registration as that would require active engagement/action, students are only temporary residents of their host community, and students have more ties (and thus opinions/knowledge of individual candidates) to their home towns. This means that college students are incredibly useful political tools for reducing property taxes, supplying cheap labor, increasing state and federal apportionment and appropriations, etc… while being a particularly weak electoral force. There are a number of knock on effects from the 14th amendments one person one vote doctrine: Firstly, the census does a direct count and counts students as residents of their host communities and secondly, local municipalities must create representative districts with roughly equal populations. These two facts mean that there will oftentimes be a district which is predominantly students which when paired with the structural challenges facing students, means that landed voters in those districts have a higher than average say in local government. Further, these individuals are potentially more opposed to colleges and students given their proximity. Thus, it is potential that college students are not only not very well represented in local government, but that their own representatives are potentially particularly opposed to their presence.

The connection between a college’s ability to negotiate IGAs with a municipal government and thus the provision of services aimed at college students and the lack of political representation within the municipal government should help explain what role student’s realistically have. This in combination with true theoretic development as well as qualitative work regarding elected officials and professional staff at municipal governments as well as constituents should be able to explore the town-gown relationship, theories of representation in use by elected officials, public service values of professional staff, and potentially derive normative claims about how to structure government to more equitably provide services and levy taxes.