Eric Magar

Gubernatorial Coattails in Mexican Congressional Elections

Mexican congressional elections 1979–2009 are examined to determine if gubernatorial candidates have coattails helping candidates on the same ticket get elected to higher office and how the advent of democracy changed this. Analysis distinguishes rates at which gubernatorial votes transfer to congressional races from vote thresholds that gubernatorial candidates must exceed to help, rather than hinder, copartisans. Regression estimates reveal that state parties transferred, on average, 49% of their gubernatorial success to congressional candidates in a concurrent race since 1979 and 69% since 1997. Thresholds indicate that it is easier for the PAN and the left to gain from coattails than the PRI, but the difference shrunk with democracy. Presidential coattails, examined for reference, are shorter on average than gubernatorial ones. So local forces appear to move Mexican congressional campaigns and elections as much as national forces since at least 1979, raising questions about the relevance of federalism...

Factions with Clout: Presidential Cabinet Coalition and Policy in the Uruguayan Parliament

We investigate bill passage by party factions in Uruguay and show that those joining cabinet coalitions earn policy influence. The policy advantage of coalition is therefore not collected by the president alone, as often implied: partners acquire clout in law-making and use it to pass bills of their own and to strike deals with outside factions. Analysis of all bills initiated between 1985 and 2005 reveals that the odds of passing a bill sponsored alone by a majority cabinet faction was about 0.5, up from about 0.15 otherwise. Contingent upon the cabinet status of factions involved, the odds of co-sponsored bills conform well to patterns expected by a view that policy rewards are a fundamental part of the politics of coalition in presidentialism.

The Political Economy of Fiscal Reforms in Latin America: Mexico

This paper describes the main features of the Mexican fiscal system, details the most important changes that have occurred/not occurred over the past two decades, and explains what factors influenced the rate, degree and direction of change. In brief, we contend that there have been profound and ideologically consistent changes in spending assignment and in the institutional arrangements governing taxes, spending and debt management. Over the past 20 years, Mexico has moved from a highly centralized fiscal system characterized by extensive presidential discretion to a moderately decentralized system with more meaningful checks and balances. Decentralization of spending assignments has been coupled with steps designed to increase transparency, efficiency and accountability over public funds. Changes to the revenue collection system, by contrast, have been considerably smaller in magnitude and not quite as consistent in ideational terms; while the general trend has been to increase tax revenue in an equitable manner, not all changes in tax law have increased revenue or equity.

México: la accidentada consolidación democrática

Repasamos los principales eventos politicos de Mexico en 2006. La eleccion presidencial mas renida de la historia de Mexico dejo en un lejano segundo plano las demas elecciones que se desarrollaron en el ano (para renovar las dos camaras del Congreso federal, 6 gubernaturas, 12 congresos estatales, y 566 Ayuntamientos en 12 estados) y dejo fuera de la agenda muchos temas de politica publica. Y aunque el desconocimiento del triunfo del adversario por parte del candidato derrotado parece dejar mal parada a la naciente democracia mexicana, son muchos mas los indicadores de una democracia perfectible pero que funciona. Por tratarse de la primera entrega de lo que sera un ejercicio anual, hemos incluido en la resena, por su relevancia, informacion previa al 1 de enero de 2006

MÉXICO: Reformas pese a un gobierno dividido

2007 fue el primer ano de la presidencia de Felipe Calderon, del Partido Accion Nacional. El nuevo gobierno hizo hincapie en la lucha contra la delincuencia organizada, usando al ejercito en vez de la policia civil. Destacan tambien negociaciones entre presidente y partidos para cambiar tres normas de importancia: la ley de pensiones de servidores publicos (que subsana un enorme deficit en las finanzas del gobierno); la creacion de nuevos impuestos (que aumentan levemente, pero por primera vez en decadas, la capacidad recaudatoria del gobierno); y una reforma electoral (como respuesta a la crisis postelectoral de 2006). Repasamos tambien las elecciones locales que se llevaron a cabo en 14 entidades, en las que el Partido Revolucionario Institucional consiguio recuperar algunas posiciones perdidas en los ultimos anos.

The Deadlock of Democracy Revisited: A Model of Executive-Legislative Relations in Separation-of-Power Regimes

Executive-legislative deadlock is perceived as the Achilles’ heel of presidential democracy, because its occurrence has been associated with democratic breakdown in Latin America. Given the centrality of deadlock in the literature, I propose a simple spatial model of executive-legislative policy-making in separation-of-power regimes that takes deadlock as its dependent variable. The model formalizes a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for deadlock, filling a lacuna in the literature. It also addresses methodological difficulties in the empirical study of deadlock, and provide some initial evidence about vetoes in U.S. states to back-up some of the claims derived from the model.

The Value of Majority Status in the U.S. House

A key premise of partisan theories of congressional organization is that majority status confers substantial procedural advantages. In a recent paper (Cox and Magar 1999), we took advantage of the Republicans’ historic victory in the midterm elections of 1994 to assess the value of majority status in terms of lost contributions from access-seeking political action committees. This paper subjects our previous cross-temporal analyses to cross-sectional confirmation. Our results indicate that the Democrats suffered about a

How Much Is Majority Status in the U.S. Congress Worth

60,000 loss per member in business receipts after losing their majority - even controlling for the usual factors cited in the literature as affecting members’ ability to raise money (e.g., committee assignments and voting record). Although it is difficult to disentangle the impact of partisan influences from constituent pressures and personal ideology in many areas (e.g., roll call voting), the election of 1994 provides a good opportunity to measure the value of majority status in facilitating fund-raising - and the results are clearly in line with current partisan theories of congressional organization.