Editor's note: On March 16, Paul B. Ginsburg testified before the California Senate Committee on Health on fostering competition in consolidated markets. Download the full testimony here.

Mr. Chairman, Madame Vice Chairman and Members of the Committee, I am honored to be invited to testify before this committee on this very important topic. I am a professor of health policy at the University of Southern California and director of public policy at the USC Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. I am also a Senior Fellow and the Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution, where I direct the Center for Health Policy. Much of my time is now devoted to leading the new Schaeffer Initiative for Innovation in Health Policy, which is a partnership between USC and the Brookings Institution. I am best known in California for the numerous community site visits over many years that I led in the state while I was president of the Center for Studying Health System Change; most of those studies were funded by the California HealthCare Foundation.

The key points in my testimony today are:

• Health care markets are becoming more consolidated, causing price increases for purchasers of health services, and this trend will continue for the foreseeable future despite anti-trust enforcement; 
• Government can still play an effective role in addressing higher prices that come from consolidation by pursuing policies that foster increased competition in health care markets. Many of these policies can be effective even in markets with high degrees of concentration, such as in Northern California.

[1] Gaynor, M., and R. Town, The Impact of Hospital Consolidation – Update, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Synthesis Report (June 2012).

[2] Baker, L. C., M.K Bundorf and D.P. Kessler, “Vertical Integration: Hospital Ownership Of Physician Practices Is Associated With Higher Prices And Spending,” Health Affairs, Vol. 35, No 5 (May 2014).

[3] Chapin White and Megan Egouchi, Reference Pricing: A Small Piece of the Health Care Pricing and Quality Puzzle. National Institute for Health Care Reform, Research Brief No. 18, October 2014.

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International volunteer service is defined as an organized period of engagement and contribution to society by individuals who volunteer across an international border. There is growing interest in the potential of international service to foster international understanding between peoples and nations and to promote global citizenship and intercultural cooperation. Studies suggest that international service develops skills, mindsets, behaviors and networks that prepare volunteers for living and working in a knowledge-based global economy. Many believe that even short-term experiences abroad can begin to prepare participants for longer-term engagement and future international service.

International service may be growing in prevalence worldwide. In the United States, more than one million Americans reported volunteering abroad in 2008. Despite the scale of international service, its impacts are not well understood. Although there is a growing body of descriptive evidence about the various models and intended outcomes of international service, the overwhelming majority of research is based on case and cross-sectional studies, which do not permit conclusions about the impacts of international service. Scholars and practitioners in the field have called for rigorous research that documents impacts.

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INTRODUCTION

Over the past decade, the focused attention of African nations, the United States, U.N. agencies and other multilateral partners has brought significant progress toward achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in health and malaria control and elimination. The potential contribution of these strategies to long-term peace-building objectives and overall regional prosperity is of paramount significance in sub-regions such as the Horn of Africa and Western Africa that are facing the challenges of malaria and other health crises compounded by identity-based conflicts.

National campaigns to address health Millennium Development Goals through cross-ethnic campaigns tackling basic hygiene and malaria have proven effective in reducing child infant mortality while also contributing to comprehensive efforts to overcome health disparities and achieve higher levels of societal well-being.

There is also growing if nascent research to suggest that health and other humanitarian interventions can result in additional benefits to both recipients and donors alike.

The social, economic and political fault lines of conflicts, according to a new study, are most pronounced in Africa within nations (as opposed to international conflicts). Addressing issues of disparate resource allocations in areas such as health could be a primary factor in mitigating such intra-national conflicts. However, to date there has been insufficient research on and policy attention to the potential for wedding proven life-saving health solutions such as malaria intervention to conflict mitigation or other non-health benefits.

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Announcements of new federal regulations on the use of program-related investments (PRIs) and the launch of a groundbreaking fund in Chicago are the latest signals that impact investing, once a marginal philanthropic and policy tool, is moving into the mainstream. They are also illustrative of two important and complementary paths to institutional change: fast-moving, collaborative local leadership creating innovative new instruments to meet funding demands; federal regulators updating policy to pave the way for change at scale.

Impact investing, referring to “investment strategies that generate financial returns while intentionally improving social and environmental conditions,” provides an important tier of higher-risk capital to fund socially beneficial projects with revenue-generating potential: affordable housing, early childhood and workforce development programs, and social enterprises. It is estimated that there are over $60 billion of impact investments globally and interest is growing—an annual JP Morgan study of impact investors from 2015 reports that the number of impact investing deals increased 13 percent between 2013 and 2014 following a 20 percent increase in the previous year.

Traditionally, foundations have split their impact investments into two pots, one for mission-related investments, designed to generate market-rate returns and maintain and grow the value of the endowment, and the other for program-related investments. PRIs can include loans, guarantees, or equity investments that advance a charitable purpose without expectation of market returns. PRIs are an attractive use of a foundation’s endowment as they allow foundations to recycle their limited grant funds and they count towards a foundation’s charitable distribution requirement of 5 percent of assets. However they have been underutilized to date due to perceived hurdles around their use–in fact among the thousands of foundations in the United States, currently only a few hundred make PRIs.

But this is changing, spurred on by both entrepreneurial local action and federal leadership. On April 21, the White House announced that the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service had finalized regulations that are expected to make it easier for private foundations to put their assets to work in innovative ways. While there is still room for improvement, by clarifying rules and signaling mainstream acceptance of impact investing practices these changes should lower the barriers to entry for some institutional investors.

This federal leadership is welcome, but is not by itself enough to meet the growing demand for capital investment in the civic sector. Local innovation, spurred by new philanthropic collaborations, can be transformative. On April 25 in Chicago, the Chicago Community Trust, the Calvert Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation launched Benefit Chicago, a $100 million impact investment fund that aims to catalyze a new market by making it easier for individuals and institutions to put their dollars to work locally and help meet the estimated $100-400 million capital needs of the civic sector over the next five years.

A Next Street report found that the potential supply of patient capital from foundations and investors in the Chicago region was more than enough to meet the demand – if there were ways to more easily connect the two. Benefit Chicago addresses this market gap by making it possible for individuals to invest directly through a brokerage or a donor-advised fund and for the many foundations without dedicated impact investing programs to put their endowments to work at scale. All of the transactional details of deal flow, underwriting, and evaluation of results are handled by the intermediary, which should lead to greater efficiency and a significant increase in the size of the impact investing market in Chicago.

In the last few years, a new form of impact investing has made measurement of social return to investments even more concrete. Social impact bonds (SIBs), also known as pay for success (PFS) financing, are a way for private investors (including foundations) to provide capital to support social services with the promise of a return on their investment from a government agency if some agreed-upon social outcomes are achieved. These PFS transactions range from funding to support high-quality early childhood education programs in Chicago to reduction in chronic individual homelessness in the state of Massachusetts. Both the IRS and the Chicago announcements are bound to contribute to the growth of the impact bond market which to date represents a small segment of the impact investing market.

These examples illustrate a rare and wonderful convergence of leadership at the federal and local levels around an idea that makes sense. Beyond simply broadening the number of ways that foundations can deploy funds, growing the pool of impact investments can have a powerful market-making effect. Impact investments unlock other tiers of capital, reducing risk for private investors and making possible new types of deals with longer time horizons and lower expected market return.

In the near future, these federal and local moves together might radically change the philanthropic landscape. If every major city had a fund like Benefit Chicago, and all local investors had a simple on-ramp to impact investing, the pool of capital to help local organizations meet local needs could grow exponentially. This in turn could considerably improve funding for programs—like access to quality social services and affordable housing—that show impact over the long term.

Impact investing can be a bright spot in an otherwise somber fiscal environment if localities keep innovating and higher levels of government evolve to support, incentivize, and smooth its growth. These announcements from Washington and Chicago are examples of the multilevel leadership and creative institutional change we need to ensure that we tap every source of philanthropic capital, to feel some abundance in an era where scarcity is the dominant narrative.

Editor's Note: Alaina Harkness is a fellow at Brookings while on leave from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which is a donor to the Brookings Institution. The findings, interpretations and conclusions posted in this piece are solely those of the authors and not determined by any donation.

Event Information

A conversation with USAID Administrator Gayle Smith

On March 30, Global Economy and Development at Brookings and the Modernizing Foreign Assistance Network (MFAN) hosted Gayle Smith, administrator of U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) for an address on the fifth anniversary of the USAID policy on evaluation.

A principal recommendation of the Presidential Policy Determination on Global Development, signed by President Obama in 2010, was greater accountability for U.S. foreign assistance funds, including evaluation of development programs. In 2011, USAID adopted a formal policy on evaluation and since has average some 200 evaluations a year.

Among the issues that will be addressed during the event are the success and challenges in implementing the evaluation policy, the use of alternative evaluation methods, and building a system and process for turning evaluations into learning. Administrator Smith was introduced by Brookings Senior Fellow George Ingram. Following her address, he moderated a panel discussion of Ruth Levine, Wade Warren, and Jodi Nelson.

 Join the conversation on Twitter using #AIDeval

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In this presentation Robert Puentes provides a deeper understanding of trends that are impacting metropolitan America and how those trends may impact the demand for multi-family housing in the coming decades. The presentation stresses several key points including dramatic changes in household formation, the plight of older, inner-ring "first" suburbs, and the increasing diversity reflected in both cities and suburban areas.

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The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) will boost earnings for over 18 million low-income working families in the U.S. by more than $30 billion this year. This survey finds that the EITC provided a $737 million boost to the Chicago regional economy in 1998, and lifted purchasing power in the city of Chicago by an average of $2 million per square mile. Large numbers of Low-income working families lived not only in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods, but also in smaller cities throughout the region like Aurora, Joliet, Elgin and Waukegan. The survey concludes by describing steps that state and local leaders could take to build on existing efforts to link working families to the EITC, such as increasing resources for free tax preparation services, helping EITC recipients to open bank accounts, and expanding and making refundable the Illinois state EITC.

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Executive Summary

During the first decade of the 21^st century the six states of the Mountain West — Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah — experienced unprecedented political and demographic changes. Population growth in all six states exceeded the national average and the region is home to the four states that underwent the largest population gains between 2000 and 2010. As a consequence, the region is now home to some of the most demographically diverse and geographically concentrated states in the country— factors that helped to transform the Mountain West from a Republican stronghold into America’s new swing region. This paper examines the impact that increased diversity and density are exerting on reapportionment and redistricting in each Mountain West state and assesses the implications that redistricting outcomes will exert both nationally and within each state in the coming decade.  Nationally, the region’s clout will increase due to the addition of three seats in the House of Representatives (one each in Arizona, Nevada, and Utah) and electoral contexts in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico that will result in competitive presidential and senate elections throughout the decade. At the state level, the combination of term limits, demographic change, and the reapportionment of state legislative seats from rural to urban areas will alter the composition of these states’ legislatures and should facilitate the realignment of policy outcomes that traditionally benefitted rural interests at the expense of urban needs.

Introduction

As reapportionment and redistricting plans across the 50 states are finalized and candidate recruitment begins in earnest, the contours of the 2012 election are coming into focus. One region of the country where reapportionment (redistributing seats to account for population shifts) and redistricting (drawing boundaries for state legislative and congressional districts) are likely to have significant consequences in 2012 and beyond is in the six states of the Mountain West: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah. Driven by explosive growth during the past decade, the Mountain West is now home to some of the most demographically diverse and geographically concentrated states in the country. As a consequence, the region has increasingly become more hospitable to Democrats, particularly Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico and to a lesser extent Arizona. In this paper, I examine how these changes are affecting reapportionment and redistricting across the region. Specifically, after summarizing some of the key regional demographic and political changes, I offer a brief overview of the institutional contexts in which the maps are being drawn. This is followed by an assessment of outcomes in each state. I conclude with a discussion of the national and state level implications that reapportionment and redistricting are likely to engender across the Mountain West.

A Region in Transition

Between 2000 and 2010 population growth in all six Mountain West states outpaced the national average of 9.7 percent and the region contains the four states that experienced the largest percent population increase in the country (Nevada = 35.1 percent; Arizona = 24.6 percent; Utah = 23.8 percent, and Idaho = 21.1 percent).[i] As a consequence, Nevada and Utah each gained their fourth seats in the House of Representative and Arizona was awarded its ninth. Beginning with the 2012 election, the Mountain West will have 29 U.S. House seats (Idaho has two House seats, New Mexico has three, and Colorado has seven) and 41 Electoral College votes.

Across the Mountain West, population growth was concentrated in the region’s largest metropolitan statistical area (MSA).[ii] Most notably, the Las Vegas metro area is now home to nearly three out of four Nevadans — the mostly highly concentrated space in the region. In Arizona, roughly two-thirds of the population now resides in the Phoenix MSA, which grew by nearly 30 percent. The Albuquerque MSA experienced the largest overall increase as a share of total population (nearly 25 percent) and now contains 44 percent of New Mexico’s population. And while Idaho remains the state in the region with the least dense population, growth in the Boise MSA significantly outpaced that state’s overall population gain and nearly 40 percent of all Idahoans reside in and around Boise. On the other end of the spectrum are the Salt Lake City and Denver MSAs, which as shares of the Colorado and Utah populations decreased slightly from 2000. Still, better than half (50.57 percent) of all Coloradoans live in Denver and its suburbs and around 41 percent of Utah’s population is concentrated in the Salt Lake City MSA.

In addition to further urbanizing the region, the prior decade’s growth continued to transform the region’s demographics as all six Mountain West states are now more ethnically diverse as compared to a decade ago.[iii] The largest changes occurred in Nevada where the minority population increased by over 11 percent and now better than 45 percent of Nevadans are classified as non-white. While the bulk of this growth was among Hispanics, whose share of the population increased by 7 percent and are now 26.5 percent of all Nevadans, the Silver State also recorded large increases among Asian and Pacific Islanders. Arizona experienced similar increases as that state’s minority population mushroomed from 36.2 percent to 42.2 percent with Hispanics now constituting 30 percent of the population. In Colorado, the minority population increased by 3.5 percent to 30 percent. Nearly all of this change was caused by an increase in Hispanics, who now constitute 20.7 percent of the state’s population. New Mexico continues to be the Mountain West’s most diverse state as nearly three out of five New Mexicans are minorities and the state contains the region’s largest Hispanic population (46 percent). And while Idaho and Utah remain overwhelmingly white, both states’ non-white populations grew at levels similar to Colorado. Idaho is now 16 percent non-white (including a Hispanic population of 11.2 percent) and nearly one in five Utahans is a minority. Between 2000 and 2010, Hispanics increased by 4 percent to constitute 13 percent of Utah’s population.

Politically, these changes helped to create competitive electoral contexts across the region. Indeed, with the obvious exceptions of Idaho and Utah, the Mountain West is now more hospitable to the Democratic Party than it was in 2000. In particular, Democrats were able to make significant gains in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico and effectively flipped those states from Republican leaning in 2000 to Democratic leaning in 2010. In Arizona, the Democratic performance was highly variable and moved in near perfect tandem with the broader national political environment. At the same time, the downturn in Democratic support in 2010 indicates that the party has not yet consolidated its gains. Riding a favorable 2010 macro-environment, Mountain West Republicans gained one governorship (New Mexico), seats in ten of the region’s 12 state legislative chambers, and seven House seats (out of a total of 26 in the region).[iv] Thus, heading into the 2011 redistricting cycle, Republicans control the executive and legislative branches in Arizona, Idaho, and Utah and there are no Mpuntain West states where the Democrats have unified control as the partisan composition of the Colorado legislature is divided and Nevada and New Mexico have Republican governors and Democratic legislatures.

The Institutional Context

Because of variation in the institutional arrangements governing how each state approaches reapportionment and redistricting, the impact that the demographic and political changes outlined above are exerting on map drawing differs across the region. To be sure, there are a number of commonalities across the states such as requirements of equally populated U.S. House districts, minimum population variation for state legislative districts, and boundary lines that are compact, contiguous, and maintain communities of interests. 

Beyond these constraints, mapmakers across the region are afforded different degrees of latitude in how they go about doing their work. For instance, in Nevada and New Mexico, the residency of incumbents can be considered, while Idaho forbids it. Idaho allows for twice as much inter-district population variation for state legislative districts as Colorado and New Mexico, and Idaho only allows state legislative districts to cross county lines if the counties are linked by a highway. Arizona and Idaho mandate that two lower chamber districts be nested within the boundaries of a state senate seat, while Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah do not. Nevada also allows for multi-member member state legislative districts. Lastly, Arizona’s redistricting plans must be pre-cleared by the U.S. Department of Justice. While Arizona is the only state in the region subject to preclearance, protection of minority voting rights also has been a point of contention in prior redistricting cycles in New Mexico.

The Mountain West states also vary in terms of who oversees the redistricting process. State legislators control the process in Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah, while Arizona and Idaho use commissions. In Colorado, the General Assembly draws the map for the state’s seven U.S. House seats, while a commission oversees the drawing of state legislative maps. For the three states that use commissions for either all or part of their processes, commission size and composition differs significantly and only the Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) is charged with drawing maps that are competitive.[v] 

However, the most significant constraint on reapportionment and redistricting in the Mountain West is the small size of the region’s state legislatures.[vi] The mix of small chambers, increased urbanization, and large geographic spaces means very large and increasingly, fewer and fewer stand- alone rural districts. This dynamic also helps to explain the region’s history of malapportionment that often allocated seats by county regardless of population.[vii] 

State Summaries

Based upon the overview presented above, expectations about the general contours of reapportionment and redistricting in the Mountain West are fairly straightforward: the clout of urban and minority interests will increase and to the degree that those factors benefit the Democrats, the Democrats should gain some partisan advantage. Realizing these outcomes, however, has proven to be less than amicable. With the exception of Utah, all other states in the region have had various aspects of their processes litigated, and map drawing for Colorado’s U.S. House seats and all of Nevada and New Mexico’s redistricting is being completed in state courts. Below, I summarize the status of reapportionment and redistricting in each state.

Arizona

Beginning its work amid criticism of its composition, calls for its abolishment, and an investigation by the Arizona attorney general, the voter-initiated Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (AIRC) has struggled to balance the conflicting demands of drawing competitive districts with the protection of minority voting rights. The commission’s work has been further hindered by Republican Governor Jan Brewer’s unsuccessful attempt to impeach the commission’s nonpartisan chair. In addition, Arizona has filed a lawsuit in federal court challenging the state’s preclearance requirement.

Republican attempts to undermine the AIRC stem from the fact that given unified Republican control of the Arizona governorship and legislature, Republicans would otherwise be in a position to implement a partisan gerrymander. At the same time, the GOP’s present dominance is partially an artifact of the 2001 redistricting. To gain preclearance in 2001, the AIRC’s maps created a large number of majority-minority state legislative districts and minority-friendly U.S House seats by packing Democratic voters into these districts. In so doing, Democratic support in the surrounding districts was weakened; allowing Republicans to more efficiently translate their votes into seats.[viii] Thus, despite a slight partisan voter registration advantage (4.35 percent as of July 2011), Republicans presently hold more than two-thirds of the state legislative seats and five of eight U.S. House seats.

Given Arizona’s growth patterns between 2000 and 2010 coupled with the AIRC’s charge of creating competitive district, drawing a map as favorable to the GOP in 2011 is virtually impossible unless the size of the Arizona legislature is increased. Still, in order to protect minority voting rights, Arizona’s final maps are likely to tilt in favor of the GOP — just not to the degree that they have in the past. In particular, the elimination and consolidation of rural state legislative districts and a more urban orientation for Arizona’s nine U.S. House districts should provide the Democrats with electoral opportunities that will only increase as Arizona’s population continues to diversity and urbanize.

Colorado

As noted above, Colorado uses a commission (the Colorado Redistricting Commission) for redistricting state legislative seats and the Colorado General Assembly draws the maps for the state’s seven U.S. House seats. Neither process has gone smoothly. For the state’s seven U.S. House seats, the Democratic-dominated state senate and the Republican-controlled lower chamber failed to find common ground after exchanging two rounds of maps. Because Democratic governor John Hickenlooper refused to call a special session, redistricting of Colorado U.S. House seats was completed in state court. After a good deal of legal wrangling, the Colorado Supreme Court upheld a map favored by Colorado Democrats that creates two safe Republican districts, one safe Democratic district, and four districts where neither party’s registration advantage exceeds 4 percent. As a consequence, Colorado will feature a number of competitive U.S. House elections throughout the coming decade.

Map drawing for state legislative seats by the CRC has also been hindered by partisanship. Hoping to break a partisan stalemate, in late summer the nonpartisan chair of the CRC offered maps that combined parts of prior Democratic and Republican proposals to create thirty-three competitive seats (out of a total of 100) and twenty-four seats with Hispanic populations of 30 percent or more. After being approved by the CRC with some Republican dissents, the plan was rejected by the Colorado Supreme Court, which must sign-off on the CRC’s plans before they can be implemented. By attempting to draw more competitive maps — a criterion that the CRC is not obligated to consider – the CRC’s maps undermined its charge of producing districts that keep communities of interest intact. The CRC’s second set maps, which were widely viewed as favoring the Democrats, were upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court.

Idaho

While partisan considerations have loomed large in the reapportionment and redistricting processes in Arizona and Colorado, in Republican-dominated Idaho the main points of contention have been spatial. Indeed, because of the difficulty of satisfying a constitutional requirement limiting county splits and a state law constraining how geographic areas can be combined, the Idaho’s Citizen Commission for Reapportionment (ICCR) failed to reach an agreement before its constitutionally imposed deadline. After sorting through a number of legal and constitutional questions, a second set of commissioners were impaneled and completed their work in less than three weeks. Given Idaho’s partisan composition, the final maps are a regional anomaly as they benefit the GOP while being somewhat more urban oriented. This was accomplished by moving rural Republican voters into urban Democratic state legislative districts and adjusting the lines of Idaho’s 1st House district to shed roughly 50,000 citizens. At the same time, because of Idaho’s strict constraints on how cities and counties can be divided, the map for the state legislature paired a number of incumbents in the same district and one district contains the residences of five incumbents, setting up a number of competitive primary elections.

While growth patterns and demographic and partisan change in Nevada between 2000 and 2010 insured a redistricting process that would favor Democrats, Nevada Republicans sought to delay this inevitability as long as possible. The state’s Republican governor, Brian Sandoval, vetoed two sets of maps passed by the Democratic controlled legislature and Sandoval refused to call a special session to complete redistricting. Instead, he and his party hoped for a better outcome in state court. Despite drawing a supervising judge who was the son of a former Republican Governor, Nevada Republicans fared no better in state court. Ultimately, the process was turned over to three special masters who rejected Nevada Republicans’ claim that section 2 of the Voting Rights Act required a majority Hispanic U.S. House district.[ix] As a consequence, two of Nevada’s U.S. House seats favor Democrats, one is safely Republican, and the fourth is a swing district. In the Nevada legislature the representation of urban interests will increase as parts of or all of forty-seven of the sixty-three seats in the Nevada legislature are now located in the Democratic stronghold of Clark County. 

New Mexico

The 2011 process in New Mexico has essentially been a rerun of the gridlock that engulfed the state’s 2001 redistricting debate. Once again, the Democrats sought to use their control over both chambers of the New Mexico legislature to preserve their majorities and draw the boundaries for the state’s three U.S. House seats in manner favorable to the party. However, because of bickering among Democrats the legislature failed to approve its map for the state’s three U.S. House seats prior to the end of the special session and the plans for the state legislature that were passed on party line votes were vetoed by Republican governor Susana Martinez. Thus, once again, New Mexico’s divided state government coupled with the state’s history of litigating redistricting plans (in 2001 map drawing and court battles cost the state roughly $3.5 million) means that redistricting will be completed in state court. While the Republicans may be able to gain some concessions through the courts, New Mexico is the most Democratic state in the Mountain West and, as noted above, the state’s growth during the prior decade was concentrated in heavily Democratic Albuquerque and its suburbs. Thus, as in 2001, the likely outcome in New Mexico is a redistricting plan that will be favorable to the Democrats and weaken the influence of rural interests.

Utah

Utah is the only state in the region where conditions exist (e.g., unified partisan control in a non-commission state) for the implementation of a partisan gerrymander. However, to accomplish this end required the slicing and dicing of communities and municipalities particularly those in and around the state’s urban center. Most notably, in drawing the state’s four U.S. House seats, Republicans divided the Utah’s population center (Salt Lake City County) into four districts by combining parts of the urban core with rural counties - a plan that, not coincidentally, cracks the only part of the state where Democrats are able to compete. Similarly, maps for state legislative districts increase the number of seats that favor the GOP and, in many instances, protect incumbents from potential primary challengers by dividing communities into multiple districts. Democrats in Utah are so depleted that they were unable to get the Republicans to even agree to include recognition and protection of minority communities of interest to in Utah’s redistricting guidelines. Thus, despite constituting nearly 20 percent of the state’s population, minorities received no consideration in Utah’s 2011 redistricting.

Implications and Conclusions

Reapportionment and redistricting are often regarded as the most political activities in the United States; an expectation that is certainly being realized across the Mountain West. In the swing states where legislators draw the maps (for example, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico) but where state government is divided, partisan considerations loomed large, causing all of these states to conclude all or parts of their redistricting processes in the courts. The conflicts between Arizona’s preclearance requirement and the AIRC’s commitment to drawing competitive districts have partisan consequences as well. In one-party Idaho and Utah, the politics of space were at issue.  Geographic constraints on district boundaries imposed through statute and the Idaho constitution ensured that more rural seats were preserved and that the growing influence of urban interests will be checked. In Utah, Republicans moved in the opposite direction by carving up the very communities from which they are elected in order to implement a partisan gerrymander. 

Another school of thought, however, argues that the most typical redistricting outcome is not partisan gain or loss, but an uncertainty that shakes up the state political environment and facilitates political renewal. In the case of the Mountain West, there is evidence to support that claim as well. The biggest source of uncertainty will continue to be growth. While the economic downturn has slowed migration to the region, the Mountain West states remain poised to keep expanding in a manner that will further concentrate and diversify their populations. A second source of uncertainty is the region’s large number of nonpartisans. While redistricting is often framed as a zero-sum game played between Democrats and Republicans, the electoral hopes for either party hinges on its ability to attract the support of the region’s expanding nonpartisan demographic.[x] 

At the state level, with the exception of Idaho, the most significant consequence will be a reduction in rural influence. The combination of term limits in Arizona, Nevada, and Colorado, small legislative chambers, and fast growing urban populations will continue to decrease the number of entrenched rural legislators and the number of stand-alone rural districts. Consequently, urban interests should be positioned to align state policy with demographic reality. The void created by the demise of rural legislators will be filled by minorities, particularly Hispanics. To date, the increased political activism of Hispanic communities across the region has primarily benefited Democrats; helped in no small part by the hard-line rhetoric and policies championed by some Mountain West Republicans.[xi] More generally, depending on growth patterns, by 2020 Nevada and perhaps Arizona may join New Mexico as states with majority-minority populations. Thus, with or without Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, minority legislators, primarily Hispanics, will increase their ranks significantly. The only question is whether all of these politicians will be taking office with a “D” next to their names or whether some will be elected as Republicans.  

Nationally, the impact of reapportionment and redistricting is mixed. Certainly, the addition of three U.S. House seats after the 2010 census will give more voice to regional issues in Washington D.C. At the same time, because the Mountain West’s House delegation will continue to be split along partisan lines and many of the region’s competitive House seats will rotate between the parties throughout the decade, it may be difficult for any but the safest Mountain West representatives to accrue the requisite seniority to become players in the House. Also, because of pending retirements in Arizona and New Mexico, a successful 2010 primary challenge in Utah, and a resignation in Nevada, the region’s influence in the U.S. Senate is likely to decline in the near term. Indeed, after the 2012 election the only senators from the region who will have served more than one term will be Nevada’s Harry Reid, Arizona’s John McCain, Idaho’s Mike Crapo, and Utah’s Orrin Hatch (presuming a successful 2012 reelection).

Thus, the arena where the region is likely to garner the most attention is in the coming decade’s three presidential elections. Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico were all battleground states in 2004 and 2008, with Republican George W. Bush narrowly winning all three in 2004 and Democrat Barack Obama flipping them blue in 2008 by wider margins. Obviously, Idaho and Utah will remain out of reach for the Democrats in statewide contests for some time.  However, Arizona is likely to become the region’s fourth swing state in the near future. Thus, continued investment in Arizona and throughout the region will allow the Democrats to further expand the number of Mountain West states in play while forcing the GOP to spend resources to defend turf that it once could safely call its own.

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• The Impact of Density and Diversity on Reapportionment and Redistricting in the Mountain West

Editor's Note: On December 3, Richard Bush delivered testimony before the Subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Read his testimony below and watch the hearing online.

There has been a wide range of views in Hong Kong about the value of democratic elections.

So far, the Chinese government has consistently chosen to engineer the Hong Kong electoral system so that no individual it mistrusts could be elected chief executive (CE) and no political coalition that it fears could win control of the Legislative Council (or LegCo). To elect the chief executive, it created an election committee composed mainly of people it trusts. For LegCo, it established functional constituencies that give special representation to establishment economic and social groups. These functional constituencies together pick half the members of LegCo. As a result, Hong Kong’s economic elite has dominated those institutions.

Major economic interests in Hong Kong have been happy with the current set-up because it provides them with privileged access to decision-making and the ability to block initiatives proposed by the democratic camp. Within this establishment, there is long-standing belief that majority rule would create irresistible demands for a welfare state, which would raise taxes on corporations and wealthy individuals and sap Hong Kong’s competitiveness.

The public, on the other hand, supports democratization. In the most representative election races (for some LegCo seats), candidates of the pro-democracy parties together get 55 to 60 percent of the vote. Those parties have tried for over twenty years to make the electoral system more representative and to eliminate the ability of Beijing and the establishment to control political outcomes.  But there are divisions within the pan-democratic camp between moderate and radical factions, based on the degree of mistrust of Beijing’s intentions.

There is a working class party and a labor confederation that supports Beijing and is supported by it. On electoral reform, it has followed China’s lead.

Of course, any electoral system requires the protection of political rights. The Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong Basic Law protected those rights on paper, and the judiciary generally has upheld them. But there are serious concerns in Hong Kong that political rights are now being whittled away.

The August 31^st decision of the PRC National People’s Congress-Standing Committee on the 2017 Chief Executive election confirmed the fears of Hong Kong’s pan-democratic camp that Beijing does not intend to create a genuinely democratic electoral system. That decision almost guaranteed there would be with some kind of public protest.

Before August 31^st, there had been some hope in Hong Kong that China’s leaders would set flexible parameters for the 2017 election of the chief executive, flexible enough to allow an election in which candidates that represented the range of local opinions could compete on a level playing field. Instead, the rules the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress laid down were interpreted as ensuring that Beijing and the local Hong Kong establishment, by controlling the nominating committee, could screen out candidates that they saw as a threat to their interests.

I happen to believe that before August 31^st there was available a compromise on the nomination process. The approach I have in mind would have liberalized the composition of the nominating committee so that it was more representative of Hong Kong society and set a reasonable threshold for placing someone in nomination. This would have been consistent with the Basic Law (a Chinese requirement) and likely ensured that a pan-Democratic politician could have been nominated (the democrats’ minimum hope). Hong Kong voters would have had a genuine choice. There were Hong Kong proposals along these lines. Such an approach would have had a chance of gaining the support of moderate Democrats in Legislative Council, enough for reaching the two-thirds majority required for passage of the election plan.

Reaching such a compromise was difficult because of the deep-seated mistrust between the Hong Kong democratic camp and Beijing, and within the democratic camp. If there was to be movement towards a deal Beijing would have had to signal that it was serious about such a compromise, in order to engage moderate democrats. It chose not to, and an opportunity was lost.

Why Beijing spurned a compromise is unclear.

Perhaps it interpreted its “universal suffrage” pledge narrowly, to mean one-person-one-vote, and not a competitive election. Perhaps it wished to defer a truly competitive contest until it was sure that one-person-one-vote elections would not hurt its interests. Perhaps Beijing was overly frightened about the proposed civil disobedience campaign called “Occupy Central.” Perhaps it judged that radical democrats would block their moderate comrades from agreeing to a compromise. Perhaps China actually believed its own propaganda that “foreign forces” were behind the protests. Perhaps it never had any intention of allowing truly representative government and majority rule. But if Beijing believed that taking a hard line would ensure stability, it was badly mistaken.

Whatever the case, the majority in Hong Kong saw the August 31^st decision as a bait-and-switch way for Beijing to continue to control the outcome of the CE election and as a denial of the long-standing desire for genuine democracy. A coalition of student leaders, Occupy Central supporters, democratic politicians, radical activists, and middle class people resorted to the only political outlet they had: public protest. If the Chinese government had wished to empower Hong Kong radicals, it couldn’t have hit upon a better way.

Although Beijing’s August 31^st decision guaranteed a public response in Hong Kong, the form it took was unexpected. Student groups preempted the original Occupy Central plan, and the takeover of three separate downtown areas resulted, not from a plan but from the flow of events. The Hong Kong Police did overreact in some instances, but each time it sought to reestablish control, there was a surge of public support for the core protester groups, mobilized by social and other media.

The protests were fueled by more than a desire for democracy.

Also at work were factors common in other advanced societies. Hong Kong’s level of income and wealth inequality is one of the highest in the world. Young people tend to believe that they will not be able to achieve a standard of living similar to that of their parents. Real wages have been flat for more than a decade. Buying a home is out of reach for young people, in part because a small group of real estate companies control the housing supply. Smart and ambitious individuals from China compete for good jobs.

Hong Kong students have gotten the most attention in the current protests. Just as important however, are older cohorts who are pessimistic about their life chances. They believe that the Hong Kong elite, which controls both economic and political power, is to blame for these problems. They regard genuine democracy as the only remedy.

The Hong Kong government’s response has been mixed but restrained on the whole.

The Hong Kong police did commit excesses in their attempt to control the crowds. Teargas was used once early on, and pepper spray on a number of occasions since then. There was one particular incident where police officers beat a protester excessively (for which seven of the officers involved were arrested last week).

It is worth noting that the scenario for which the police prepared was not the one that occurred. What was expected was a civil disobedience action in a relatively restricted area with a moderate number of protesters who, following their leaders’ plan, would allow themselves to be arrested. What happened in late September was very different. There were three venues instead of one. Many more protesters took part, and they had no interest in quickly offering themselves for arrest. Instead, they sought to maintain control of public thoroughfares, a violation of law, until Beijing and the Hong Kong government made major concessions. Even when courts have ordered some streets cleared, those occupying have not always complied.

After the initial clashes, the Hong Kong government chose not to mount a major crackdown but instead to wait out the protesters. It accepted the occupation for a number of weeks, and now seeks to clear some streets pursuant to court order. Moreover, the government undertook to engage at least one of the students in a dialogue over how to end the crisis. In the only session of the dialogue to occur, on October 21^st, senior officials floated ideas to assuage some of the protesters’ concerns and to improve upon the electoral parameters laid down by Beijing.

The dialogue has not progressed for two reasons. First of all, the Hong Kong government is not a free agent in resolving the crisis. Beijing is the ultimate decider here, and the Hong Kong government must stay within the guidelines it sets. Second, the student federation leaders who took part in the dialogue are not free agents either. They represent only one of the student groups, and other actors are involved. With its leadership fragmented, the movement has never figured out its minimum goals and therefore what it would accept in return for ending the protest. It underestimated Beijing’s resolve and instead has insisted on the impossible, that Beijing withdraw the August 31^st decision. Now, even though the Hong Kong public and the leaders of the original Occupy Central effort believe that the protesters should retire to contend another day, the occupation continues.

For those who believe that the rule of law is a fundamental pillar of Hong Kong’s autonomy, the last two months have been worrisome. Once some members of a community decide for themselves which laws they will obey and which they won’t; once the authorities pick and choose which laws they will enforce and abide by, the rule of law begins to atrophy. The protesters’ commitment to democracy is commendable. The generally restrained and peaceable character of their protest has been widely praised. But something is lost when both the community and its government begin to abandon the idea that no-one is above the law.

Regional views and implications

Observers have believed that the implications of the Umbrella Movement are greatest for Taiwan, because Beijing has said that Taiwan will be reunified under the same formula that it used for Hong Kong (one-country, two systems). And there was momentary media attention in Taiwan when the Hong Kong protests began, but it quickly dissipated. The vast majority of Taiwan citizens have long since rejected one-country, two systems. China’s Hong Kong policies only reconfirm what Taiwan people already knew.

Hong Kong events also send a signal to all of East Asia’s democracies, not just Taiwan. Anyone who studies Hong Kong’s politics and society comes to the conclusion that it has been as ready for democracy as any place in East Asia, and that its instability in recent years is due more to the absence of democracy than because it is unready.

The long-standing premise of U.S. policy is that Hong Kong people are ready for democracy. Since the protest movement began, the U.S. government has reiterated its support for the rule of law, Hong Kong’s autonomy, respect for the political freedoms of Hong Kong people, and a universal-suffrage election that would provide the people of Hong Kong “a genuine choice of candidates that are representative of the peoples and the voters’ will.” Washington has also called for restraint on all sides.

Finally, the strategic question for East Asia is what the rise of China means for its neighbors. That question will be answered in part by China’s power relative to the United States and others. But it will also be answered by what happens between China and its neighbors in a series of specific encounters. Through those interactions, China will define what kind of great power it will become. North Korea, the East and South China Seas, and Taiwan are the most obvious of these specific encounters. But Hong Kong is as well. If the struggle there for a more democratic system ends well, it will tell us something positive about China’s future trajectory. If it ends badly, it will say something very different.

Looking forward, several options exist for resolving the crisis and only one of them is good.

One option is a harsh crackdown by China. Article 18 of the Basic Law gives Beijing the authority to declare a state of emergency in Hong Kong if “turmoil” there “endangers national unity or security and is beyond the control” of the Hong Kong government. In that case, Chinese national laws would be applied to Hong Kong and could be enforced in the same way they are in China. We would then see crowd control, Chinese style. I believe this scenario is unlikely as long as Beijing has some confidence that the protest movement will become increasingly isolated and ultimately collapse.

A second option is that the occupation ends but the unrepresentative electoral system that has been used up until now continues. That would happen because two-thirds of the Legislative Council is required to enact the one-person-one-vote proposal of the Chinese and Hong Kong governments for electing the chief executive. Getting two-thirds requires the votes of a few democratic members. If all moderate democrats oppose the package for whatever reason, then the next CE will be elected by the 1,200-person election committee, not by Hong Kong voters. Protests are liable to resume. There is a danger that in response, Beijing will move quietly to restrict press freedom, the rule of law, and the scope for civil society beyond what it has already done.

The third scenario is for a late compromise within the parameters of Beijing’s August 31^st decision. The goal here would be to create a process within the nominating committee that would make it possible for a leader of the democratic camp to be nominated for the chief executive election, creating a truly competitive election. That requires two things. First, the nominating committee must be more representative of Hong Kong society. Second, the nominating committee, before it picks the two or three election nominees, should be able to review a greater number of potential nominees. Done properly, that could yield the nomination of a democratic politician whom Beijing does not mistrust but whose platform would reflect the aspirations of democratic voters. Prominent individuals in Hong Kong have discussed this approach in print, and Hong Kong senior officials have hinted a willingness to consider it. For such a scenario to occur, Beijing would have to be willing to show more flexibility than demonstrated so far; the Hong Kong government should be forthcoming about what it has in mind; and some leaders of the democratic camp must be willing to engage both Beijing and the Hong Kong government. In the climate of mutual mistrust that has deepened since August 31^st, that is a tall order. But at this point it appears to be the best way out of a bad situation.