Electoral rules and the diversity of legislators' sociodemographic attributes: Chile, 2013-2017

ABSTRACT

Introduction:  In democracies with institutionalized parties, when district magnitude and legislature size increase, and other barriers to entry decrease, the number of parties with representation tends to increase. But does the diversity in sociodemographic attributes of legislators also increase?

Materials and methods:  With information from the 318 legislators elected in 2013 and 2017 in Chile, a stable democracy, but with high levels of inequality and little diversity in its elite, we evaluated the effect of three changes to electoral laws - a more proportional electoral system with greater magnitude of district, increase in the number of seats in the legislature, and a new campaign finance system - on seven indicators of diversity. We estimated logistic statistical models to identify the determinants of diversity of legislators in the dimension of i) gender, ii) school in which they studied, iii) academic degree, iv) profession, v) ethnicity and vi) place of birth, and an ordinary least squares model to assess diversity in vii) age. We also estimated ordinary least squares models to assess the presence of legislators with diversity attributes in each electoral district.

Results:  With analysis at the individual and electoral unit level, we report that the changes implemented increased diversity, but not uniformly. There are more legislators with attributes of diversity since the entry into force of the electoral reform in 2017 among debutant legislators and among the candidates who spend the least in their campaigns. In turn, there is a greater presence of legislators with attributes of diversity in districts with a greater number of seats.

Discussion:  While electoral reforms that seek to increase inclusion create opportunities, parties must actively have affirmative action policies to take advantage of them. The presence of incumbents makes it difficult for legislators with more diversity attributes to arrive, and the barriers to entry associated with campaign financing and candidate recruitment processes also prevent more legislators with diversity attributes from arriving.

Keywords personal attributes; social diversity; electoral reform; political elite; Chile