Citizens’ ability to influence public decisions is the hallmark of democracy, and central to this are candidate selection mechanisms. Despite the increasing popularity of primaries across the globe, scholars disagree on how incumbency status shapes primary election contests. To address this question, I exploit an electoral reform in Argentina that forces parties and coalitions to participate in primaries, but allows these to be contested or uncontested. Employing an original data set on federal legislative nominations between 2011 and 2017, I show that internal divisions encourage contested primaries within the opposition, to which district-level rivals strategically respond in kind by fielding multiple internal lists to counter any potential electoral “bonus” others may enjoy from contesting in primaries. Combined with the influence of presidents and governors over selection procedures, these patterns entail that primary races are closely fought within the opposition but trouble-free under incumbency status.
Literature on legislative success tends to focus on independent variables of which lawmakers have scarce control. This article analyzes instead how legislators’ strategies affect their success in Congress. I posit that while weak ties between congresspeople are the most useful in increasing success in the chamber of origin under majoritarian settings, they do not raise the likelihood of bill approval in the second chamber or in plurality‐led legislatures. Building on a data set that contains all bills proposed to the Argentine Congress between 1983 and 2007, results support these context‐dependence hypotheses. I then use data from the Uruguayan Congress (1995–2010) to explore how the argument plays out in a Latin American legislature with weaker gatekeeping rules (i.e., an “open sky” legislature). Findings help gain insight into the strategies used in environments different from that of the widely studied U.S. Congress.
When (and why) do legislators quit their jobs? Previous answers to this question have focused on retirements. Looking at voluntary resignations instead, in this article we argue that leaving Congress to assume an elected (executive) office or a position in the (sub)national bureaucracy may be a career-advancing move motivated by progressive ambition. We document this claim with data from argentina, where roughly 12% of elected deputies leave voluntarily before their term ends, but rarely become unemployed. Consistent with expectations, we show that resignations tend to follow instances of executive alternation at the (sub) national level, and are driven by legislators placed at the top of party lists as well as those elected in midterm years. in many democracies, a seat in the national legislature is the summit of a normal political career. in legislatures that combine internal seniority rules with substantial influence over policymaking, successful politicians attempt to extend their tenure as long as possible, as attested by the 80%-90% renomination rates observed in the us House (göbel and Munzert Forthcoming, Figure 5). Legislative stability, in this sense, offers opportunities to reach powerful positions within the body, gain influence over the agenda, and thus affect policy outcomes. as a consequence, (early) retirements are rare, and often associated with serious health issues (Hibbing 1982) and electoral vulnerability (groseclose andKrehbiel 1994;Hall and van Houweling 1995;Lawless and theriault 2005;Moore and Hibbing 1998;theriault 1998), sometimes aided by politically weakening scandals (Basinger 2013). a similar logic operates in parliamentary regimes, where the main career goal, a cabinet post,
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This paper studies the impact of democratic reforms on the levels of criminal violence. Focusing on Brazil, we exploit the staggered implementation of electronic voting technology in 1998 and provide strong empirical evidence that democratizing reforms may significantly reduce local levels of conflict even in contexts of weak institutions and criminal structures. We argue that electronic voting decreased the levels of criminal conflict by invigorating political accountability and eroding the hegemony of political parties more likely to establish pacts with organized criminal groups. By implementing a regression discontinuity that exploits a population-based threshold, we find that violence diminished by 0.5 standard deviations in municipalities that adopted electronic voting. Moreover, these same municipalities experienced a 0.3 standard deviation decrease in electoral violence, but only in electoral years. Our paper shows how relatively cheap institutional reforms may curb violence and contributes to debates on democratic reforms, election violence, and criminal groups.
Under what conditions can democracy reduce violent conflict? We argue that, in weakly institutionalized contexts, institutional reforms that promote the rise of programmatic parties may decrease levels of violence. We exploit the implementation of a political reform in Brazil that gradually introduced electronic voting to reduce electoral fraud. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that violence decreased by a half standard deviation in municipalities where electronic voting was first adopted, relative to those where the technology was not implemented. We show that by reducing electoral fraud and increasing enfranchisement, electronic voting eroded the power of hegemonic political machines more likely to collude with organized criminal groups. These results, we show, cannot be explained by higher investments in security or social programs. This paper sheds light on the links between criminal violence and elections, the alternatives to iron-fist policies to curb crime, and the unintended consequences of democratic reforms in weakly institutionalized contexts.
Extensive research suggests that electoral competition and power alternations increase violence in weakly institutionalized democracies. Yet, little is known about how political parties affect violence and security. We theorize that the type of party strengthened in elections shapes security outcomes and argue that the rise of programmatic parties, at the expense of clientelistic parties, can significantly reduce violence. In contexts of large-scale criminal violence, programmatic parties are less likely to establish alliances with coercive actors because they possess fewer incentives and greater coordination capacity. Focusing on Brazil, we use a regression discontinuity design that leverages the as-if random assignment of election winners across three rounds of mayoral races. We find that violent crime decreased in municipalities where programmatic parties won coin-flip elections, while it increased in those where clientelistic parties triumphed. Our findings suggest that whether electoral competition increases violence depends on the type of party that wins elections.
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