Paradox of Redistribution: Legislative Overrepresentation and Regional Development in Brazil

This article examines the relationship between legislative malapportionment, redistribution, and regional economic development. One of the primary justifications for legislative malapportionment—the disparity between the share of legislative seats and the share of the national population—is interregional income equalization by means of favorable allocations of resources to rural areas through overrepresentation. By analyzing the case of Brazil using instrumental variables, this study evaluates the theoretical argument and the empirical validity of the presumed mechanism linking unequal representation to regional development and national economic convergence. It argues that in contexts of undeveloped democracies, rather than convergence, disproportionate resource transfers via overrepresentation hinder the development of beneficiary regions. The empirical analyses of Brazilian states indicate that while overrepresented jurisdictions do receive disproportionate shares of resources from the federal government, disproportionate resource transfers, and dependence on resource transfers attributable to overrepresentation hamper the development potential of those regions.