David Samuels of the University of Minnesota, who coauthored a paper with Richard Snyder in 2001 on unequal representation for the British Journal of Political Science (“The Value of a Vote: Malapportionment in Comparative Perspective”), had some helpful comments on our post on overrepresentation of small states/provinces:

Check out Thies’ work on the consequences of over-representation in Japan, if you haven’t seen it already. A paper that appears in the last year in LSQ by two Japanese political scientists (and that won an award from the Legis. Studies section of APSA) was on the same subject and country.

Edward Gibson’s work (and with former grad students – articles in World Politics, etc.) has looked at the consequences of apportionment distortions in Latin America for fiscal policy, e.g. My book, published last year, looks at the relationship between federalism and executive-legislative relations in Brazil, with particular attention to malapportionment of under-populated states. Federalism and Territorial Politics in Latin America.

I’d also again say that the piece Rich and I have in Gibson’s edited volume (Federalism and Territorial Politics in Latin America) might be good food for thought for you as for causal stories. For example, in Latin America the key political dynamic that *generated* malapportionment was not federalism per se (the case of Chile bears this out quite clearly), but that both authoritarian and democratic leaders have sought to manipulate the “rules of representation” to favor their allies. This includes forgoing a decennial census, which has the effect of under-representing any city experiencing population growth over time (Chile), creating 2 new states out of 1 old state (Argentina, Brazil), etc. etc. The US seems unique, or close to it, in that the court system has imposed a 1-person 1-vote solution in the lower chamber of the legislature. In some countries, e.g. the UK, political negotiations lead to a similar outcome (e.g. the last Reform Act), but in many countries, it seems that political-electoral concerns favoring under-represented districts overwhelm lofty democratic notions of the equality of the weight of the vote for all citizens – even in single-chamber legislatures in non-federal systems.

Good luck,
David