Why so many representatives? Extending the cube root law to local assemblies

Benoît Le Maux () and Sonia Paty ()
Additional contact information
Benoît Le Maux: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Sonia Paty: UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2, GATE Lyon Saint-Étienne - Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon - Saint-Etienne - UL2 - Université Lumière - Lyon 2 - UJM - Université Jean Monnet - Saint-Étienne - EM - EMLyon Business School - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: We investigate the impact of territorial fragmentation on political representation by apply- ing Taagepera's cube root law to subnational governments. Our model reveals that the total number of local representatives is more elastic to changes in the number of jurisdictions (elasticity e = 2∕3 ) than to variations in population size ( e = 1∕3 ), a relationship we refer to as the law of 2/3. As a result, fragmented areas experience amplified political representa- tion. We show that the cube root law holds at the municipal level across 13 countries, albeit imperfectly. Empirical evidence from French municipalities further supports the law of 2/3.

Keywords: Representative democracy; Decentralization; Local public sector; Cube root law (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Public Choice, inPress, ⟨10.1007/s11127-025-01304-2⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05155889

DOI: 10.1007/s11127-025-01304-2

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().