Legislative malapportionment and institutional persistence

Abstract

The EH Clio Lab WP series disseminates research developed by lab researchers and students quickly in order to generate comments and suggestions for revision or improvement before publication. They may have been presented at conferences or workshops already, but will not yet have been published in journals. The EH Clio Lab is a research group that applies economic tools-theory as well as quantitative tools applied in economics-to the study of economic history. The current two main research topics: (i) "The Republic in Numbers" and (ii) papers on more specific historical issues and problems, using data both from the República and other sources. The latter consists in the collection and construction of a large number of statistical series about Chile`s development process during the past two centuries.

Why Don’t We Tax the Rich? Inequality, Legislative Malapportionment, and Personal Income Taxation Around the World

“…Thirdly, we draw on recent work specifically on the effects of malapportionment in Latin America. Bruhn, Gallego and Onoratto (2010) provide empirical evidence that overrepresented areas are more likely to vote for parties aligned with the elite. We build from this paper in presenting legislative malapportionment as an institutional device that biases the policy process in favor of some economic actors at the expense of others.…”

“…In particular, we show how legislative malapportionment, denoting a discrepancy between the share of legislative seats and the share of population held by electoral districts, serves as a tool for elites to preserve their economic interests in a democracy by introducing bias in political representation. Because over-represented districts tend to be dominated by parties aligned with the elite, at least across Latin America (Bruhn, Gallego and Onoratto, 2010), we argue that these groups are able to block attempts at introducing progressive taxes in the legislative arena and thus safeguard their economic interests.…”

“…This is the approach taken by Bruhn, Gallego and Onoratto (2010) in their analysis of the institutional and policy consequences of legislative malapportionment in Latin America, and the one that we follow in building our own argument in the next section. The authors show that citizens in overrepresented districts are more likely to vote for parties close to pre-democracy ruling groups (e.g., the elite) and have systematically lower levels of political competition.…”

“…In building our argument (next section), we draw from the approach in Bruhn, Gallego and Onoratto (2010) and focus on the political features of electoral districts (e.g., which parties or groups dominate in overrepresented and underrepresented areas), rather than its socioeconomic characteristics that are often highlighted by the federalism perspective. However, we depart from Bruhn et al in three main ways.…”

“…Chile transitioned to democracy, the electoral system (along with other key political institutions) was redesigned to guarantee the over-representation of areas where conservative parties dominated (Londregan, 2000;Bruhn, Gallego and Onoratto, 2010). Therefore, even after a country formally transitions to democracy, economic policies can still be shaped by the elite's preferences since malapportionment increases the number of seats for parties aligned with the elite (Bruhn, Gallego and Onoratto, 2010), and thus offers an institutional veto point or leverage to protect its specific interests in the policymaking process.…”