The origins of dual malapportionment: Long-run evidence from Argentina

Legislative malapportionment often results from a credible commitment between elites from core urban regions and peripheral rural regions that favors the latter. Research shows that such agreements typically arise at critical junctures like the birth of federations, constitutional conventions, and transitions to democracy. But why do elites in core regions, often the most populous and prosperous, accept to be persistently underrepresented? Why do these elites not renege and try to reverse their fortunes in the legislature? We argue that core region(s) may become overrepresented in the executive cabinet as a compensation mechanism. We evaluate this argument leveraging a novel dataset of all ministers and legislators in Argentina (1860–2015). We confirm that legislative malapportionment has existed since the 1800s and has underrepresented large provinces, notably Buenos Aires. However, we show that existing literature has overlooked cabinet malapportionment—Buenos Aires has historically been overrepresented in the executive, balancing its legislative underrepresentation. We argue that “dual malapportionment” facilitated state formation by lowering the risk of interregional conflict in the 19th century. In the 20th, we provide evidence suggesting that Buenos Aires’ demographic and economic dominance, as well as its dense elite networks, facilitated the persistence of its cabinet dominance. Our findings highlight the informal dynamics of inter-branch compensation mechanisms among elites, which may enable the emergence and maintenance of heterogeneous polities over time.