Ideas Making the Rounds

Josefina Vázquez's panista agenda will focus on, among other goals, cutting the number of federal bureaucrats and reducing the size of the Chamber of Deputies from 500 to 400 representatives. Beatriz Paredes has also announced her support for a smaller lower house.

I don't think there's a huge functional difference between 500 and 400 representatives (likewise for the 200 versus 100 plurinominal deputies from whom the reduction would be drawn), but there's a couple of reasons that this is hard to take too seriously. Among them, the chances of a political body effectively reducing its size are comparable to a boxer punching himself; not impossible, but contrary to the mindset and interests of elected officials and therefore very unlikely.

And while I don't think the cut would be a bad thing, I also don't think it provide any particular benefit. The tax-payer savings would be a drop in the bucket, it wouldn't make a tri-partisan congress any less unwieldy, and there is some value in avoiding vast reorganizations to vital institutions, just to avoid the inevitable upheaval it causes.