Elitism in the Aisle A Long-Run Surname Measure of Legislative Elite Composition in Chile 1834–2020

Jul 16, 2026

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The link between descriptive and substantive representation is well established yet difficult to reconstruct historically due to thin class records. The study introduces a replicable enduring-elite surname measure that combines a contemporary socioeconomic criterion with historical elite registers, then applies it to the Chilean Congress from 1834 to 2020. Using a dynamic population reference from 22.65 million birth registrations, elite representation declines from about half in the 1860s to about 12% in the 2010s. A sharp 11–13 point drop aligns with the 1925 constitutional reform. From 1910–1950, elite and common legislators diverge in topic emphasis—defense, foreign affairs and administration versus labor, social welfare and justice.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages56

Reading Time2 h 21 min

Abstract

Introduction

Descriptive vs substantive representation

Measuring social class over long historical runs

The enduring-elite surname measure concept

Validation logic and comparison to alternative coding approaches

Main empirical payoffs and findings

1925 constitutional reform and shifts in representation

Topic modeling of legislative speeches

arXiv :2607 .08520v 1 [ cs . SI] 9 Jul 2026 Elitism in the Aisle: A Long-Run Surname Measure of Legislative Elite Composition in Chile, 1834–2020 ∗ Naim Bro† Juan Pablo Luna‡ July 10, 2026 Abstract The link between descriptive and substantive representation is well established in the literature but is hard to trace historically, where class records are thin. We introduce a replicable enduring-elite surname measure, pairing a contemporary socioeconomic criterion with historical elite registers, and apply it across the Chilean Congress, 1834– 2020. Against a dynamic population reference built from 22.65 million birth registrations, the enduring-elite share of Congress falls from about half in the 1860s to about 12% in the 2010s, with a sharp drop of 11 to 13 points around the 1925 constitutional reform. In 1910–1950, composition co-moves with the legislative agenda, net of party: common-surname legislators emphasize labor foremost, elite legislators a statecraft agenda of defense, foreign affairs, and administration. Across this window, who sits in Congress moves together with what Congress attends to. Keywords: descriptive representation, substantive representation, surnames, elite persistence, legislative speech, Chile ∗ Replication data and code are available at [https://github.com/naimbro/elitism-in-the-aisle](https://github.com/naimbro/elitism-in-the-aisle). This work was funded by ANID—Millennium Science Initiative Program—code ICN17-002 and code 1523A0005 to N.B. and J.P.L., and by Fondecyt Iniciación 11251464 . The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. †Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez and Instituto Milenio Fundamentos de los Datos (IMFD) . Email: [naim.bro.k@uai.cl](naim.bro.k@uai.cl). ‡McGill University; Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile; and Instituto Milenio Fundamentos de los Datos (IMFD). Email: [juan.luna@mcgill.ca](juan.luna@mcgill.ca). 1 Introduction The distinction between descriptive representation (who legislators are) and substantive representation (what they do) is foundational to the study of representation (Pitkin, 1967 ; Mansbridge, 1999), and the link between the two is well documented: legislators from working-class backgrounds support greater state and social spending than their wealthier peers in Latin America (Carnes and Lupu, 2015) and the United Kingdom (O’Grady, 2019), social and group background shapes parliamentary debate more broadly (Fiva, Nedregård, and Øien, 2025), and these backgrounds shape preferences most strongly early in a career (Carnes and Lupu, 2023) . The difficulty is measuring social class. Knowing a legislator’s social origin typically requires occupational records, surveys, or biographies, thin where they are most needed, over long runs of time and distant historical periods. The literature is thus overwhelmingly cross-sectional or short-span (Thompson et al. , 2019 ; Carnes and Hansen, 2016 ; Bailer et al. , 2022 ; Barnes and Saxton, 2019 ; Murray, 2023 ; Gulzar, 2021) . This article offers a method to close that gap: a replicable, long-range surname measure of legislative elite composition applied uniformly across nearly two centuries of the Chilean Congress, 1834–2020 . We call it the enduring-elite surname measure. The idea is simple: insofar as surnames carry ancestry, they carry social information, and a legislative body with many surnames that have persisted at the top of the hierarchy is more likely to be controlled by elites than one with few of them. The approach draws on an established literature that uses surnames to track social status and mobility across generations (Collado, Ortuño-Ortín, and Romeu, 2008 ; Clark et al. , 2015 ; Clark, 2014), including in Chile and the Andean region (Jaramillo-Echeverri, Álvarez, and Bro, 2021 ; Bro and Mendoza, 2021) and for political alignments elsewhere (Byrne and O’Malley, 2013), and on a parallel literature that re

FAQs

What challenge does the paper address about studying representation over long periods in Chile?

It addresses the difficulty of tracing the historical link between legislators’ descriptive attributes and their substantive actions when class-related records are sparse across time and geography.

How does the enduring-elite surname measure work?

It constructs an externally anchored estimate of elite composition by pairing a contemporary socioeconomic criterion with historical elite registers, using surnames as a proxy for ancestry and social information.

What major historical shifts does the paper find in Chile’s congressional elite composition between 1834 and 2020?

Elite representation falls from about half in the 1860s to about 12% in the 2010s, with a sharp 11–13 point decline around the 1925 constitutional reform.

Jul 16, 2026

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