Parties of the Left and the Right do not fight the electoral battle on even terrain. Parties that defend the status quo draw on advantages that parties seeking radical social change cannot: big-dollar campaign contributions and dark money, the relative weakness of labor movements, capitalist control of major media outlets, and the constraining effects of “business confidence” that can undermine the passage of leftist policies. The deck is stacked against the Left before the campaigning and voting even begin.

In Britain, as well as the United States and other former British colonies, left-wing parties confront an additional barrier to success: a “winner-take-all” electoral system that systematically prevents them from translating their votes into a proportionate number of legislative seats. In these systems, conservative parties routinely form majority governments without receiving a majority of the votes. And since left-wing voting strength tends to be concentrated in urban areas, major cities in these countries often go without effective representation in national and subnational governments.

In his recent book Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide, Stanford University political scientist Jonathan Rodden analyzes how economic geography interacts with electoral systems to the disadvantage of the Left. Here, he speaks with Jacobin contributing editor Chris Maisano about the Left’s geography problem, the role of gerrymandering and voter suppression, and the prospects for reshaping political parties and electoral institutions.