The strategic determinants of legislative malapportionment in new democracies Articles
Overview
published in
- ELECTORAL STUDIES Journal
publication date
- February 2023
start page
- 1
end page
- 9
issue
- 102568
volume
- 81
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
- 0261-3794
Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)
- 1873-6890
abstract
- When the number of seats to be elected in the districts of an electoral system is not proportional to their population, the cost of seats in raw votes tends to vary across districts. Malapportionment generates partisan bias when some parties do better (worse) in the districts where seats are cheaper (costlier) than in other districts. While existing research has focused on the exogenous determinants of malapportionment, in this article we argue that malapportionment also derives from the strategic decisions of ruling elites to maximize their legislative representation. The degree of malapportionment in newly democratized countries increases when ruling policymakers have reliable ex ante information about the geographical distribution of partisan support, and the authoritarian incumbent, at the moment of democratic transition, is strong. Our arguments are tested with original data from 60 third and fourth-wave democracies at national and district levels.
Classification
subjects
- Sociology
keywords
- democratic transitions; dictatorships; electoral systems; malapportionment; third and fourth-wave democracies