Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Instittutional Variation, Balance of Power and Agenda Control: Evidence from the Argentine Subnational Legislatures

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

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.