The Winners and Losers of Representation: geographic inequality in parliamentary representation

Is every citizen equal when it comes to the parliamentary attention they receive? It is well-known that some places, namely larger cities, might be the losers of representation in majoritarian systems. However, we know little about the losers of representation in proportional representation systems. Recent research suggests that PR systems have within-system inequalities across districts, particularly when there is high variation in district magnitude. In this paper, we explore the legislative behavioral consequences of within-system variation in district magnitude. We measure the extent to which different electoral districts and municipalities receive unequal levels of attention in parliament, relative to what we would expect based on their population size. Using 20 years of parliamentary speech data (1999-2019) in Portugal, whose electoral system has a very large variability in district magnitude, we employ a state-of-the-art Name Entity Recognition, together with a Named Entity Linking, in order to collect every mention to geographical places in the speeches of parliamentarians. We then investigate which places are overrepresented or underrepresented in parliament, relative to their population size. Our findings have important implications for normative conceptions of territorial-based representation, on which almost all electoral systems rest.