The Consequences of Malapportionment: A Note of Caution

Malapportionmient of state legislatures has often been blamed for a miscellany of ills in state government. Three indices of malapportionment are constructed and used in a correlational analysis to test whether malapportionment has been associated with some of the ills complained of. The anialysis indicates that malapportionment is not associated with them. Consequently, our assessmenit of the changes which may come about as a result of reapportioning state legislatures must be less sanguine. L egislative miialapportionlment has become a principal target in the effort to reform state governmllent. It has been demonstrated beyond doubt that state legislative seats are not equally distributed by population. Likewise, few doubt that the states are not as vigorous as they might be in attacking their problems. Many observers attribute much of state governments' weakness to malapportionmlent. In V. 0. Key's words, "it must be assigned a high rank" among the factors which have led to the low stature of state legislatures.1 * I am grateful to my colleagues, Clara Penniman, Lewis A. Froman, Jr., and Robert Alford for their helpful commllenlts on an earlier draft. 1 V. 0. Key, Jr., American State Politics: An This content downloaded from 157.55.39.215 on Tue, 30 Aug 2016 04:30:52 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE CONSEQUENCES OF MilALAPPORTIONMENT 257 Charles Adrian asserts, "IMalapportionmeit., in termns of population, lhas serious effects upon governmiental policies."2 He goes on to illustrate these effects with examples of harsh treatmiient of criminals and mental patients in some states, policies wihiclh are allegedly imposedI by rural legislators upon the states. Malcolm Jewell states, "In a number of states, 1malapportionment weakens the two-party systemii.... It is most importanat politically wlheni it produces divided governlment."3 Since the Supreme Court's clecision in Baker v. Carr ill 1962, legislative malapportionmenit hlas.won recognitioln as a national political problem. For the first tilmie in our history, the Court lhas ordered legislatures to reapportion. As a conisequence, efforts to reapportion state legislative seats are underway across the nation. The proponents of reapportionmllent, reflecting the criticisms of state government, look to their program with great hope. After reapportionment, a new day will dawn for the states; they will be free to assert their rightful place in our governmental system. The argument that legislative mialapportionimient is largely responsible for or conniected with lack of party comnpetition, divided governmient, unfair distribution of funds, and unprogressive legislation is based on a series of illustrations. Jewell argues by pointing out Rhode Island and Kentucky where he asserts that miialapportionment has made it difficult for the weaker party to win effective power. He uses Louisiana, Florida, and Texas to illustrate the advantage the rural wing of a party may have through its domliinant position in the legislature. Adrian cites the case of Alabama wlhere the apportionment system apparently exacerbated rural-urban divisions in the legislature.4 The argumenits would be more convincing, however, if we could measure the effect of malapportionment oni all 50 states, for if malapportionment is the villain, tlhose states that are relatively well apportioned would be substantially f ree froml the (lefects cited while those states which are badlly apportioned would suffer fronm them. In fact it is possible to measure some of these phienomena and test the effect of nalapportionmlent on state politics. MIEASURING THE CONSEQUENCES OF