Commentary: Tough Institutions inColorblind Injustice

In: Social science history: the official journal of the Social Science History Association, Band 24, Heft 2, S. 435-441

Abstract

It is no small task to provide an account of voting rights in both the First and Second Reconstructions. It is hard to think of many with the combined expertise in both fields who could have pulled it off as well as J. Morgan Kousser has inColorblind Injustice(1999).Kousser has long been a historiananda social scientist. In his earlier work , such asThe Shaping of Southern Politics(1974), Kousser was clearly one of the leading proponents and artful innovators in the use of quantitative methods in historical analysis: he did not merely import old ideas from quantitative social scientists. Now, inColorblind Injustice, we see Kousser again combining his thorough and deft historian's touch with insights from social scientific approaches.The key explanatory theme inColorblind Injustice, I believe, is captured in two terse sentences: "Culture is fragile. Institutions are tough" (366). From these premises come Kousser's central ideas about how to explain the progress and retrogression of minority voting rights and why we should care so much about the set of Supreme Court rulings beginning withShaw v.Renoin 1993.