Progress or Backlash? The Political Effects of Affirmative Action Enforcement

• In Event: Causes and Consequences of Civil Service Reform

Abstract

Affirmative action programs in public sector agencies are a canonical example of race-conscious remedial policy. While affirmative action policies have increased public sector diversity, conventional wisdom suggests that they generated intense political backlash, increasing white support for the Republican Party in the 1970s and 80s. Surprisingly, there has been little empirical assessment the backlash thesis. Affirmative action may instead politically empower African Americans and increase racial liberalism among voters. Exploiting the onset of court-mandated affirmative action plans in U.S. police departments, difference-in-differences estimates suggest a robust positive effect of affirmative action on Democratic vote shares. However, we also find that the policy mandates reduced white population shares, suggesting white flight explains a substantial amount (but not all) of the electoral effect. These results suggest an important role for countervailing political responses to race-conscious social policy, and complicate the view that affirmative action was politically counterproductive in the post-civil rights era.

Authors

• Jake M Grumbach, Princeton University

• Abhay Aneja, UC Berkeley