Political Elites: Representation in the Executive and Legislature as Substitutes

• In Event: The Genesis of Representative Institutions

Abstract

Existing research finds that legislative malapportionment is the result of a credible commitment between elites from (rural and less populated) peripheral regions and elites from (urban and densely populated) core regions. Such commitment can prevent the breakup of a newly independent country (Ardanaz and Scartascini, 2013), as well as their alignment with the economic policies preferred by urban elites in exchange for resources from the central government (Gibson and Calvo, 2000). However, so far little attention has been paid to whether and how this amicable agreement among political elites extends into the executive branch. Does legislative over-representation of rural regions extend into ministerial over-representation? Or are legislative (over-)representation and executive (over-)representation substitutes instead of complements? To answer this question, we constructed a novel dataset on biographies of all Argentinian ministers and legislators from its foundation until today (c. 1770-2019), including detailed information on individuals' province and town of origin, political affiliation, and roles in the public sector. Leveraging this data, we first confirm that the malapportionment promoted by landed elites led rural provinces to be over-represented in the legislature for much of Argentina's history. Second, we show that traditional literature on legislative malapportionment misses half of the story: urban provinces have been historically over-represented in the executive branch, counteracting their under-representation in the legislative branch. We provide evidence that legislative malapportionment endures in part because of an informal agreement whereby urban regions are over-represented in the cabinet. These findings illuminate the formal and informal dynamics of regional elites' compensation commitments in large federations.

Authors

• Victoria Paniagua, London School of Economics

• Joan Ricart-Huguet, Loyola University Maryland