WHO'S AFRAID OF LANI GUINIER?
Lani Guinier is concerned with two somewhat different aspects of minority representation ("Who's Afraid of Lani Guinier?" Feb. 27). The first has to do with electoral politics. Here she has some useful things to say. The American system of winner-take-all elections does penalize a minority in an electoral district: a group may constitute a substantial minority in a large number of districts and yet be outvoted in all of them. The cumulative voting scheme she discusses (or a simpler system of proportional representation, of the type used in most other democratic nations) would allow minority viewpoints fairer representation in legislative bodies such as Congress.
But fairer representation of this sort need not help much with her second concern: whether minorities get a chance to implement their policy preferences. For example, European parliaments elected by proportional representation may have a broader range of opposition viewpoints than the American Congress, but minority parties do not necessarily become part of governing coalitions or play much of a role in policy making.
If Ms. Guinier wants to claim that certain concerns are of such fundamental importance that they, like freedom of religion or freedom of speech, ought to be protected from majority pressure, let her say so clearly and let her say why. If Ms. Guinier wants to move toward a political process in which consensus is more important and confrontation less important, let her explicitly set out a mechanism for convincing the majority that it is in its interest to accommodate the demands of the minority.
Ms. Guinier is dealing with very important questions of fairness in a divided political system. But if changes in rules of representation would allow minority viewpoints to be better articulated within legislative bodies, minority groups would not be guaranteed a sympathetic response. The political task of coalition-building is unlikely to be solved by tinkering with representation systems alone. DAVID G. LAWRENCE Associate Professor of Political Science Fordham University Bronx