![[PDF]](/pb-assets/Icons/adobe-pdf-icon-1498649896243.png){kind=icon}
Abstract
Democratic representation is increasingly remote from citizens. Many institutions exacerbate this remoteness, but the shrinking ratio of legislative representatives to citizens is perhaps the most obvious. Around the world, the number of representatives has not kept pace with growing populations. To what extent does this distance, between citizens and their elected politicians, explain our current democratic malaise? Relying on both quantitative and historical evidence, this article maps the remoteness of democratic representation and considers its causes, consequences, and potential remedies. Strongly associated with economic inequality and rural elites, the remoteness of representation has far-flung implications, ranging from deficits of diversity and accountability in political representation to the weakened capacity of citizens to engage in political collective action.
Keywords
References
| Acemoglu, D, Johnson, S, Robinson, JA (2005) Institutions as a Fundamental Cause of Long-Run Growth. In: Aghion, P, Durlauf, S (eds). Handbook of Economic Growth. Elsevier, 385–472. doi: 10.1016/S1574-0684(05)01006-3. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Albertus, M (2017) Landowners and democracy. World Politics 69(2): 233–276. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Annenberg Public Policy Center (2016) Americans’ knowledge of the branches of government is declining. In: The Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Available at: https://www.annenbergpublicpolicycenter.org/americans-knowledge-of-the-branches-of-government-is-declining/(accessed on 5 June 2020). Google Scholar | |
| Ardanaz, M, Scartascini, C (2013) Inequality and personal income taxation. Comparative Political Studies 46(12): 1636–1663. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Auriol, E, Gary-Bobo, RJ (2012) On the optimal number of representatives. Public Choice 153(3–4): 419–445. Springer. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Beck, N, Katz, JN (1995) What to do (and not to do) with time-series cross-section data. American Political Science Review 89: 634–647. JSTOR. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Bell, A, Fairbrother, M, Jones, K (2019) Fixed and random effects models: making an informed choice. Quality & Quantity 53(2): 1051–1074. Springer. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Berman, S (2019) Democracy and Dictatorship in Europe: From the Ancien Régime to the Present Day. New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | |
| Bhatti, Y, Hansen, KM (2019) Voter turnout and municipal amalgamations-evidence from Denmark. Local Government Studies 45(5): 697–723. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Blom‐Hansen, J, Houlberg, K, Serritzlew, S (2021) Jurisdiction size and local government effectiveness: assessing the effects of municipal amalgamations on performance. European Journal of Political Research 60(1): 153–174. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Boone, C, Wahman, M (2015) Rural bias in African electoral systems: legacies of unequal representation in African democracies. Electoral Studies 40: 335–346. Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Brady, K, Witting, V (2020) Germany Seeks Electoral Reform to Avoid XXL Bundestag. DW.COM, 25 August. Available at: https://www.dw.com/en/germany-seeks-electoral-reform-to-avoid-xxl-bundestag/a-54694043 (accessed on 30 December 2020). Google Scholar | |
| Carey, JM, Hix, S (2011) The electoral sweet spot: low‐magnitude proportional electoral systems. American Journal of Political Science 55(2): 383–397. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Chen, J, Malhotra, N (2007) The law of k/n: the effect of chamber size on government spending in bicameral legislatures. American Political Science Review 101(4): 657–676. Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Cinelli, C, Hazlett, C (2020) Making sense of sensitivity: Extending omitted variable bias. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series B (Statistical Methodology) 82(1): 39–67. doi: 10.1111/rssb.12348. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Coppedge, M, Gerring, J, Knutsen, CH, et al. (2021) “V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v11.1”. Varieties of Democracy Project. doi: 10.23696/VDEMDS21. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Cox, GW, McCubbins, MD (2001) The institutional determinants of economic policy. In: Haggard, S, McCubbins, MD (eds), Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy. Cambridge, UK New York: Cambridge University Press, pp. 21–63. Google Scholar | |
| Easterly, W (2007) Inequality does cause underdevelopment: insights from a new instrument. Journal of Development Economics 84(2): 755–776. Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Eaton, K (2014) Recentralization and the left turn in Latin America. Comparative Political Studies 47(8): 1130–1157. Los Angeles, CA: Sage Publications Sage CA. Google Scholar | SAGE Journals | ISI | |
| Elkins, Z, Ginsburg, T (2021) Characteristics of national constitutions. version 3.0. Available at: comparativeconstitutionsproject.org Google Scholar | |
| Ensley, MJ, Tofias, MW, De Marchi, S (2009) District complexity as an advantage in congressional elections. American Journal of Political Science 53(4): 990–1005. Wiley Online Library. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Gallagher, M (1991) Proportionality, disproportionality and electoral systems. Electoral Studies 10(1): 33–51. Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Gallagher, M (2019) Election Indices Dataset. Retrieved from http://www.tcd.ie/Political_Science/people/michael_gallagher/ElSystems/index.php Google Scholar | |
| Gandhi, J, Lust-Okar, E (2009) Elections under authoritarianism. Annual Review of Political Science 12: 403–422. Google Scholar | Crossref | ISI | |
| Gerring, J, Veenendaal, W (2020) Population and Politics: The Impact of Scale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Gilligan, TW, Matsusaka, JG (2001) Fiscal policy, legislature size, and political parties: evidence from state and local governments in the first half of the 20th century. National Tax Journal The University of Chicago Press, 54(1): 57–82. The University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Hayes, D, Lawless, JL (2018) The decline of local news and its effects: new evidence from longitudinal data. The Journal of Politics 80(1): 332–336. The University of Chicago Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Inter-Parliamentary Union (2019) Inter-parliamentary union data. Retrieved from https://data.ipu.org/content/list-fields Google Scholar | |
| Kedar, O, Harsgor, L, Sheinerman, RA (2016) Are voters equal under proportional representation? American Journal of Political Science 60(3): 676–691. Wiley Online Library. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Landemore, H (2013) Deliberation, cognitive diversity, and democratic inclusiveness: an epistemic argument for the random selection of representatives. Synthese 190(7): 1209–1231. Springer. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Lijphart, A (1994) Electoral Systems and Party Systems: A Study of Twenty-Seven Democracies, 1945-1990. Comparative European Politics. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Lijphart, A (2012) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. 2nd edition. New Haven: Yale University Press. Google Scholar | |
| Manin, B (1997) The Principles of Representative Government. New York: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Margaritondo, G (2021) Size of national assemblies: the classic derivation of the cube-root law is conceptually flawed. Frontiers in PhysicsFrontiers 8: 606. Google Scholar | |
| Marland, A (2019) Fewer politicians and smaller assemblies: how party elites rationalise reducing the number of seats in a legislature - lessons from Canada. The Journal of Legislative Studies 25(2): 149–168. Taylor and Francis. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Mignozzetti, UG, Cepaluni, G (2019) Legislature size and welfare: evidence from Brazil. preprint, 14 October. SocArXiv. DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/8r97e. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Moore, B (1966) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press. Google Scholar | |
| Nicolau, JM (1997) As distorções na representação dos estados na câmara dos deputados brasileira. Dados 40(3): 441–464. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Ostwald, K, Courtin, C (2020) Malapportionment in Myanmar’s elections: a slumbering menace. Contemporary Southeast Asia 42(2): 145–173. ISEAS - Yusof Ishak Institute. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Pettersson-Lidbom, P (2012) Does the size of the legislature affect the size of government? Evidence from two natural experiments. Journal of Public Economics 96(3–4): 269–278. Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Powell, GB (2000) Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Google Scholar | |
| Revel, M, Lin, T, Halpern, D (2021) The Optimal Size of an Epistemic Congress. arXiv:2107.01042 [cs]. Available at: http://arxiv.org/abs/2107.01042. Google Scholar | |
| Santos, WG (1986) Sessenta E Quatro: Anatomia Da Crise. São Paulo: Vértice. Google Scholar | |
| Shah, A (2021) What if we selected our leaders by lottery? Democracy by sortition, liberal elections and communist revolutionaries. Development and Change 52(4): 687–728. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Solt, F (2020) Measuring income inequality across countries and over time: the standardized world income inequality database. Social Science Quarterly 101(3): 1183–1199. Wiley Online Library. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Taagepera, R (1972) The size of national assemblies. Social Science Research 1(4): 385–401. Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Taagepera, R, Shugart, MS (1989) Seats and Votes: The Effects and Determinants of Electoral Systems. New Haven: Yale University Press. Google Scholar | |
| Weyland, KG (1998) The politics of corruption in Latin America. Journal of Democracy. Johns Hopkins University Press, 9(2): 108–121. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| Wooldridge, JM (2019) Correlated random effects models with unbalanced panels. Journal of Econometrics, 211(1): 137–150. Elsevier. Google Scholar | Crossref | |
| World Bank (2021) World Development Indicators. Washington, DC. Google Scholar | |
| Zucco, C, Power, TJ (2021) Fragmentation without cleavages? Endogenous fractionalization in the Brazilian party system. Comparative Politics 53(3): 477–500. Google Scholar | Crossref |
