This article examines whether U.S. legislative apportionment rules from the Constitutional Convention were unavoidable.
🔍 Data & Methods
We simulated voting preferences based on historical vote shares across states to analyze their relative stability under various constitutional rules.
⚖️ Key Findings
The outcome depended critically on state participation:
* With 13 states (excluding RI/NH), equal apportionment was stable.
* As these two states dropped out later, all rules became top cycle again.
* The emergence of the Three-Fifths Compromise in a stable equilibrium occurred only after New York departed from earlier stages.
📜 Historical Context
The analysis demonstrates how different state compositions influenced which apportionment rule gained traction during debates.
🌐 Why This Matters
The findings suggest that political outcomes are shaped significantly by historical circumstances and participant withdrawals, challenging the notion of inherent necessity.
| Coalitional Instability and the Three-Fifths Compromise was authored by Keith Dougherty and Gordon Ballingrud. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2018. |
