This article examines a crucial tension in political representation. While proportional electoral systems excel at capturing diverse public policy preferences, they may simultaneously harm the quality of selected legislators.
To explore this trade-off empirically, we analyze Switzerland's early 20th century transition to more intensive forms of proportional representation.
We overcome concerns about endogeneity by exploiting natural variation in reform implementation. This method uses administrative constraints and voter preference data.
Our analysis shows policy congruence with voters increases while legislative quality indicators decrease. The European Parliament's modern patterns support these century-old findings, suggesting a persistent trade-off between representation types.
| Electoral Reform and Trade-Offs in Representation was authored by Michael Becher and Irene Gonzalez. It was published by Cambridge in APSR in 2019. |
