De jure and de facto determinants of power

Is political power the result of the formal rules of the game or the result of more informal social conventions or both? Are the political rights of one group suppressed by legislation or by the use of extralegal forces, violence and intimidation. A new working paper (CEPR Discussion Paper No. 9064) from the Centre for Economic Policy Research looks at this question. The paper, De Jure and de Facto Determinants of Power: Evidence from Mississippi, is by Graziella Bertocchi and Arcangelo Dimico.

The paper evaluates the empirical relevance of de facto vs. de jure determinants of political power in the U.S. South (Mississippi) between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. The main message emerging from the paper is that on the one hand, there is clear evidence of an effect of legislation on political outcomes but on the other, the process of black disfranchisement starts well before the introduction of the new constitution and disfranchisement is stronger in counties where a black majority represents a threat to the de facto power of white elites. Moreover, the effect of the black share of voters becomes stronger after 1890, suggesting that the de jure barriers may have served the purpose of institutionalising a de facto condition of disfranchisement.

The abstract reads,

We evaluate the empirical relevance of de facto vs. de jure determinants of political power in the U.S. South between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. We apply a variety of estimation techniques to a previously unexploited dataset on voter registration by race covering the counties of Mississippi in 1896, shortly after the introduction of
the 1890 voting restrictions encoded in the state constitution. Our results indicate that de jure voting restrictions reduce black registration but that black disfranchisement starts well before 1890 and is more intense where a black majority represents a threat to the de facto power of white elites. Moreover, the effect of race becomes stronger after 1890 suggesting that the de jure barriers may have served the purpose of institutionalizing a de facto condition of disfranchisement.