Research indicates that the size of a legislature affects public service provision. In Brazil, larger councils lead to lower infant and postneonatal mortality rates and higher enrolment in elementary education, driven by enhanced political support for mayors and increased bureaucratic appointments.

Since the early eighteenth century, scholars have suggested that there is a trade-off between political representation and government efficiency. On the one hand, larger legislatures offer greater opportunities for ethnic and political minorities to elect their candidates, which can democratise access to public goods. On the other hand, adding representatives to a legislature may exacerbate collective action problems, thus hindering service provision. Thus, what is the actual effect of larger legislatures on public service delivery? Do legislators improve public services, or are additional lawmakers only a burden to taxpayers?

In a recent study, we tackled this question using an exogenous change in the number of municipal legislators in Brazilian cities. In March 2004, the Brazilian Electoral Court established a series of population cut-offs for all city councils in the country. The number of seats was allocated as follows: each city started with nine councillors, then added one legislator for every 47,619 inhabitants until their councils reached 21 members. Conversely, cities between one and four million inhabitants should have at least 33 councillors, and this number increased up to 41 members following the previous formula of one additional legislator per 47,619 inhabitants.

This set of electoral rules makes Brazil the ideal case to test whether one additional legislator has a positive or negative impact on public services. Although an endogenous decision motivated the Electoral Court ruling, the population cut-offs created sharp discontinuities in the distribution of local council seats. Cities close to the cut-offs had very similar characteristics, but those just above the threshold gained a new legislator. Moreover, cities could not self-select into any group, as their population estimates were calculated using the 2003 projections by the Brazilian Census Bureau (IBGE). This change in council size also happened only seven months before the election, making it impossible for candidates to adjust their service provision strategies for the 2004 election.

These increases in legislature size significantly improved municipal education and healthcare research has found. Increasing the city council size by one legislator lowered the infant mortality by 2.01 children per one thousand infants born, and reduced postneonatal mortality by 0.90 children per one thousand infants who survived their first 28 days. Larger councils also increased enrolment by 2.58 children in elementary education classrooms without reducing school quality. These are substantial figures for a developing country.

Additionally, while all municipalities mentioned public goods in their legislation, those with larger city councils had 15 percent more proposals about public service delivery. These broader public service provisions have also been confirmed by the councilors, who noted that local mayors relied on bureaucratic appointments and political favours to secure legislative support.

But what drives this improvement in public service provision? The answer is political partisanship. In Brazil, larger city councils changed the composition of mayoral coalitions and the number of appointed bureaucrats in the municipality. The extra city councillor had a 91 percent chance of belonging to the mayor’s pre-electoral coalition, which allowed mayors to reduce bargaining costs and boost public investments with fewer constraints. Also, Brazil’s unique formula to allocate seats strongly favours larger parties. As a result, small parties often join electoral coalitions to improve their chances of winning legislative seats. As mayors are usually members of the largest political coalitions, candidates from small parties have a strong incentive to side with the mayor before and after the election. This explains the additional support mayors receive from the newly-elected city councillors.

Furthermore, each additional legislator leads to 104 politically appointed bureaucrats in their municipalities. In Brazil, a higher number of political appointees is associated with better service provision, as their tenure in office depends directly on the survival of the politician supporting them. Thus, political appointees tend to be more productive than career bureaucrats, which also improves social welfare.

The implications extend well beyond Brazil. Several countries have separate executive and legislative powers, such as the federal level of presidential systems, state governments, and local city councils. As these institutions are influenced by political allegiances, the dynamics of expanded legislatures may be generalisable, and in the case of Latin America and Asia, may explain why some states can generate effective governance despite having strong executives and large coalitions.

These findings bring several further questions to the fore for future analysis. For instance, do additional legislators help mayors gain access to federal or state transfers in countries where resources are centrally provided, such as Japan? Although we show that city councillors change the dynamics of local spending, it is unclear whether this is true in unitary governments. Additionally, it is possible that other electoral characteristics can reduce or reverse the impact of additional legislators on welfare. A final consideration is that we still do not know how other legislative features affect citizen well-being. For example, city councils may vary in size, monetary compensation for councillors, committee structure, and internal power structure. Understanding how legislature size interacts with other features would improve our knowledge about how local and national legislatures provide public goods. These questions are crucial for institution design and welfare in both developed and developing democracies.

The article is based on a journal article published with American Journal of Political Science.

Umberto Mignozzetti is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Political Science and the Computational Social Sciences Program at the University of California, San Diego. Gabriel Cepaluni is an Associate Professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at São Paulo State University. Danilo Freire is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lincoln.

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