Resignation as Promotion? Executive Turnover and Early Departures in the Argentine Congress, 1983–2017

Abstract

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,

Assessing Congressional Institutionalization and Political Elites’ Renewal in Latin America Through Legislative Amateurism

“…While it is true that each body has its own norms and set of formal and informal rules -thus making experience in each specific chamber an incomparable asset-, having some prior experience, particularly as a state or provincial legislator, is something that should be considered in further analyses. Political experience as a whole (regardless the branch, level or office) should also have an impact on legislators' performance, given that it is unjustified to assume a former governor or a local representative will have as little experience as a complete outsider running for the first time (Lucardi et al, 2022). Hence, although it was not possible for this study to identify the percentage of each legislature which had previous subnational legislative experience, future research should consider this in order to accomplish a more accurate assessment of both congressional institutionalization and political elites' circulation.…”