Self-Perpetuation of Political Power: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in Argentina

Martín Rossi

No 127, Working Papers from Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia

Abstract: I investigate the relationship between tenure length in the House and posterior political success. Since tenure length in the House is potentially endogenous in a model for political success, I exploit a natural experiment in the Argentine Congress—where terms length were assigned randomly in the first Congress after the return to democracy in 1983—that provides a source of exogenous variation to initial political power. I find that having a longer tenure in the House increases both the probability of moving to higher political positions (an intrapersonal effect) and the probability of having a relative in future congresses (dynastic success or an interpersonal effect). I also find evidence that name recognition is a mechanism behind dynastic success. Finally, I explore the consequences of dynastic power and report evidence of negative correlation between being a dynastic legislator and political effort in Congress.

Keywords: political power; self-perpetuation; elites; legislators; political dynasties (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2016-08, Revised 2016-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pol
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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https://webacademicos.udesa.edu.ar/pub/econ/doc127.pdf First version, 2016 (application/pdf)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sad:wpaper:127

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