Amateur Legislators-Professional Politicians: The Argentine Congress

Mariano Tommasi, Mark P. Jones, Sebastian M. Saiegh and Pablo Spiller
Additional contact information
Mark P. Jones: Michigan State University & Center of Studies for Institutional Development
Sebastian M. Saiegh: New York University & Center of Studies for Institutional Development

No 31, Working Papers from Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia

Abstract: The Argentine Congress plays a limited role in the production of public policy and is a relatively ineffective check on the Argentine Executive Branch. We argue this is the combined result of incentives created by several features of Argentine political institutions. In this article we emphasize the role of the country’s electoral rules, which place the legislator reelection decision not in the hands of the voters, but rather in the hands of the provincial governor/party boss(es). These rules limit legislators’ ability to develop a professional legislative career and reduce their incentives to specialize and to develop strong legislative institutions. We provide empirical evidence of the short duration of congressional careers, the province-based nature of Argentine political careers, and the lack of specialization among legislators resulting from the abovementioned institutional incentives.

Keywords: legislators; politicians; politics; electoral rules; federalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14 pages
Date: 2002-07, Revised 2002-07
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (20)

Published as "Amateur Legislators-Professional Politicians: The Consequences of Party-Centered Electoral Rules in a Federal System" in American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 3, July 2002, pages 656-669

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sad:wpaper:31

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from Universidad de San Andres, Departamento de Economia Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Maria Amelia Gibbons ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).