This research investigates how patterns of legislative competition (i.e., partisan fragmentation and the majority/minority status of the government) are likely to affect the rules and practices that govern the legislative process. These different patterns of legislative competition, the investigator argues, should have an impact on the agenda-setting prerogatives of majority, plurality, and minority parties, which should determine which bill initiatives are given consideration by the plenary floor and win final approval in a state legislature. Thus, the research will show how the gatekeeping prerogatives of majority, plurality, and minority parties affect the relative success of individual legislators and the type of legislation being approved.
The data to test these hypotheses will be collected from a promising yet unexplored source: the local legislatures of Argentina's 24 provinces over a twenty-five year period, 1984-2009. The research will not only contribute to the literature on comparative legislatures but also to the knowledge of subnational legislative success in federal countries. Hence, the data generated in this project will enable other scholars to test additional hypotheses, to investigate the legislative performance of political parties and the legislative prerogatives of subnational governments in a federal country.
The units of analysis of this project include 8 bicameral and 16 unicameral legislatures in the Argentine provinces (32 legislative bodies in total). In order to investigate the relationship between the internal rules of the state legislatures and their political composition, the researcher will analyze the rate of introduction and the rate of success of bill initiatives across legislatures and over time. Because a significant number of electoral reforms have been implemented in the Argentine provinces, institutional variation within and across provinces will allow for a test of whether changes in legislative rules of procedure (or internal rules) affect legislative performance.
The researcher expects the project to show that changes in the partisan environment within local legislatures shape the selection and use of gatekeeping prerogatives by majority parties, e.g., distribution of authority posts and committee assignments. To explore the ability of the majority, plurality, and minority parties to set the legislative agenda, the researcher will distinguish rates of introduction and success by type of party, legislative bloc, and year (1983 to 2009). Variation in the partisan make-up of the legislation reaching the floor is expected to provide critical information on the use of gatekeeping institutions by majority, plurality, and majority parties.
The scheduled fieldwork will allow for the collection of data on the provincial legislatures' rules of procedure (internal rules), institutional reforms, legislative composition, committee assignments, distribution of authority posts, the full sample of bills submitted (by party, bloc, year), bills reported to the floor (by party, bloc, year) and bills approved (by party, bloc, year) for all 24 provinces for the period 1983 to 2009. The researcher will also conduct interviews with former provincial legislators and local party leaders, rank-and-file members, and political observers in order to investigate which other informal rules play a key role in the legislative process.
The findings generated in this project will contribute to the political science discipline by furthering understanding of subnational legislative politics in federal polities. Moreover, this project will disentangle institutional and contextual determinants of legislative success, which are critical to understand the organization of local legislatures. The data collected for this project are expected to make a contribution to comparative legislative studies. Such research should also prove valuable in efforts to assess the performance of legislative bodies and improve the levels of transparency and accountability in emerging democracies.
Marina Lacalle University of Houston Award Number: 1024205 This research investigates how patterns of legislative competition (i.e. partisan fragmentation and the majority/minority status of the government) affect the rules and practices that govern the legislative process. These different patterns of legislative competition, I argue, will have an impact on the agenda-setting prerogatives of majority, plurality, and minority parties; determining which bill initiatives are given consideration by the plenary floor and will get final approval in a state legislature. That is, my research will show how the gatekeeping prerogatives of majority, plurality, and minority parties; affect the relative success of individual legislators and the type of state's legislation being approved. Applied to Argentina, where subnational legislatures have considerable variation I collected data for several provinces: I created databases on legislative projects, projects’ descriptions, types of projects, sponsorship and cosponsorship, dates of initiation, status, approval, and committees for Santa Fe (N: 13051), Misiones (N: 22161), Mendoza and Buenos Aires (N: 17103). I also gathered data from La Pampa, Formosa, Catamarca, Salta, San Luis and Tierra del Fuego legislatures’ compositions since 1983 to 2009 (with the exception of Catamarca wich goes until 2007, San Luis 2008 and Tierra del Fuego which goes from 2003 to 2011); along with data on bill projects that is being processed at this time. Regarding legislatures’ internal rules, I collected 29 Reglamentos Internos (including senates) and classified them in terms of: Order of the day, Chamber directorate, Committee timetable, Discharge petitions, presidents’ attributions, requirements to call special sessions, permanent committees, committee members, committees authorities, Comision de Labor Parlamentaria, requirements to add committees, how they decide tie situations, criteria to decide: mociones de orden, mociones de preferencia, mociones sobre tablas, and cuestiones de privilegio (priviledge matters), requirements to modify projects and requirements to modify the internal rules. Over the basis of this information, I have already presented research advancements in professional meetings. In a preliminary study of the data (presented at the 69th Annual Midwest Political Science Association (MPSA) National Conference, Chicago, IL (March 31st – April 2nd 2011) and at the I Encuentro Internacional Legislativos en America Latina, ALACIP, Belo Horizonte, Brazil (October 19th – October 21st 2011), I analyzed the of plurality/majority parties’ probabilities of legislative success under two different scenarios: a legislative body with clear majoritarian tendencies along time (Buenos Aires) and a more fragmented legislature that not only have changed the color of the party holding the plurality/majority of seats, but also the color of the party in the executive (Mendoza). The results show that in fragmented legislatures the fact that two political parties have the same seat shares make projects less likely to find legislative approval. Moreover, the party of the governor plays a key role in this scenario too. In general terms, those projects submitted by political parties in a parity situation have more probabilities of being approved by the Senate depending if the party of the author/s is the same of the executive or not. Those projects submitted by the majority party (but not the party of the governor) have 17% probabilities of being approved; while those submitted by the majority party (when this is also the party in the executive office) have 27% chances of finding legislative acceptance (10% difference). On the other hand, a project submitted by a minority party in this legislature has more chances of being approved when it is the party of the governor (21% probabilities). However, when the legislator submitting a project belongs neither to the plurality nor to the party of the governor, the project has a 13% probability of being approved. What clearly plays a key role in fragmented legislatures like this one, which have periods of unclear party dominance, is the party of the executive. This leads us to think in the resources with which the party of the executive might count in the legislature to negotiate the passage of its bills of interests. In a different scenario, a project submitted by the majority party in a majoritarian legislature like Buenos Aires’s has 49% probabilities of being passed. While the probabilities of legislative approval when the project is submitted by any other party decreased in 10% or more, depending on the political party. As it is demonstrated, the strong majoritarian bias in the Buenos Aires’ Senate makes its majority political parties more likely to be successful in passing its preferred legislation than the plurality party/parties in Mendoza.
