On the optimal size of legislatures: An illustrated literature review

Santo, Alessia De; Maux, Benoît Le

doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2022.102317

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 103 publications

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“…This conclusion has been affirmed in numerous empirical studies of national as well as sub-national legislatures (e.g. Tufte 1974;Stigler 1976;Shugart and Taagepera 1989;De Santo and Le Maux 2022). If this is the case, increased polity size may not after all lead to decreased women's representation, since larger assemblies means less competitiveness over seats.…”

Section: Polity Size Seat Competitiveness and Women's Representationmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…Taagepera (1972) originally suggested that the best predictor for the size of the legislature was to take the cube root of the size of the electorate, suggesting a seats-to-size elasticity of 1/3. While most empirical studies have found the seats to size elasticity to be somewhat larger (Tufte 1974;De Santo and Le Maux 2022), the fact remains that larger polities have considerably higher numbers of eligible voters per legislative seat. The implication of this is that, large polities, despite having larger legislative assemblies than small polities, will exhibit higher levels of competition over seats.…”

Section: Polity Size Seat Competitiveness and Women's Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Polity Size and Women's Representation

Frödin-Gruneau,

Teorell,

Vernby

2024

Preprint

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Despite recent advances, women are still underrepresented in legislative assemblies across established democracies. We develop and test a novel theoretical argument about the role played by polity size in explaining these variations. All else equal, as polity size increases, the the number of potential candidates per seat, increases. In systems where male party gate keepers dominate nominations for public office, this should lead to lower women’s representation. This effect, we also argue, is only partially offset by the increase in the number of seats that typically follows an expansion of the electorate. To avoid the selection bias inherent in estimating the net impact of increases in polity size on women’s representation, we exploit two Swedish merger reforms, one in the early 1950s and one in the early 1970s, which substantively increased municipality size in ways that were largely exogenous to the doings of local political actors. The effect of increasing polity size relative to assembly size on women’s representation is negative across both reforms. Polity size emerges as an understudied source of unequal representation.

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Section: Polity Size Seat Competitiveness and Women's Representationmentioning

confidence: 89%

Section: Polity Size Seat Competitiveness and Women's Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%