Contest time: time, territory, and representation in the postmodern electoral crisis Andrew J. Perrin & Robin E. Wagner-Pacifici & Lindsay Hirschfeld & Susan Wilker Published online: 20 September 2006 # Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2006 Abstract Prior generations’ electoral crises (e.g., gerrymandering) have dealt mainly with political maneuverings around geographical shifts. We analyze four recent (1998–2003) American electoral crises: the Clinton impeachment controversy, the 2000 Florida presidential election, the Texas legislators’ flight to Oklahoma and New Mexico, and the California gubernatorial recall. We show that in each case temporal manipulation was at least as important as geographical. We highlight emergent electoral practices surrounding the manipulation of time, which we dub “temporal gerrymandering.” We suggest a theory of postmodern electoral crises, in which the rules of time and space are simultaneously in flux. These crises expose concerns with early American democratic theory, which was based on an understanding of “the people” as geographically and temporally unidimen- sional. Representative systems, therefore, were designed largely without reference to geographic and temporal complexity. One may consider the time of the Presidential election as a moment of nation crisis... intrigues grow more active and agitation is more lively and wider spread....The whole nation gets into a feverish state, the election is the daily theme of comment in the newspapers and private conversation, the object of every action and the subject of every thought, and the sole interest for the moment. It is true that as soon as fortune has pronounced, the ardor is dissipated, everything calms down, and the river which momentarily overflowed its banks falls back to its bed. But was it not astonishing that such a storm could have arisen? (de Tocqueville, 1969, Democracy in America, 135) Theor Soc (2006) 35: 351–391 DOI 10.1007/s11186-006-9006-9 A. J. Perrin (*) : L. Hirschfeld Sociology Department - CB#3210, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210, USA e-mail: andrew_perrin@unc.edu R. E. Wagner-Pacifici Swarthmore College, Swarthmore, PA 27599-3210, USA S. Wilker School of Law, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104, USA