Scott Morgenstern

Legislative Politics in Latin America

Tables and figures Contributors preface and acknowledgements Party names and other acronyms and abbreviations 1. Towards a model of Latin American legislatures Scott Morgenstern Part I. Executive-Legislative Relations: 2. Oscillating relations: president and congress in Argentina Anna Maria Mustapic 3. Presidential cabinets, electoral cycles and coalition discipline in Brazil Octavio Amorim Neto 4. Exaggerated presidentialism and moderate presidents: executive-legislative relations in Chile Peter M. Siavelis 5. Executive-legislative relations: the case of Mexico (1946-97) Ma. Amparo Casar Part II. Political Parties and Legislative Structure: 6. Explaining the high level of party discipline in the Argentine congress Mark P. Jones 7. Party discipline in the chamber of deputies Barry Ames 8. Parties, coalitions and the Chilean congress in the 1990s John M. Carey 9. Understanding party discipline in the Mexican chamber of deputies: the centralized party model Benito Nacif Part III. Legislatures and the Policy Process: 10. Fiscal policy making in the Argentine legislature Kent H. Eaton 11. Progressive ambition, federalism and pork-barreling in Brazil David Samuels 12. Appointment, re-election and autonomy in the senate of Chile John Londregan 13. The legal and partisan framework of the legislative delegation of the budget in Mexico Jeffrey A. Weldon Part IV. Conclusions: 14. Explaining legislative politics in Latin America Scott Morgenstern 15. Epilogue: Latin Americas reactive assemblies and proactive presidents Gary W. Cox and Scott Morgenstern References Author index General index.

Party Nationalization and Institutions

Party nationalization has two distinct components: the first is based on the degree of homogeneity in the geographic distribution of a partys vote, and the other is defined by the degree to which national events are reflected in the change in a partys electoral support in all regions of the country. In spite of literature tying the static/distributional and the dynamic components together, we show theoretically and empirically that there is a nonnecessary link between them. We then use a seemingly unrelated regression analysis on 60 parties across 28 countries to show that while the executive system (presidentialism vs. parliamentarism) drives an explanation of the dynamic levels of nationalization, the electoral system explains much of the variance in the static/distributional aspect of the phenomenon.

PARTIES, COALITIONS, AND THE CHILEAN CONGRESS IN THE 1990s

Prior to the military regime of 1973-90, Chile’s Congress was widely regarded as among the strongest legislatures in Latin America, largely because of the nature of its party system. In the wake of the transition back to democracy, the role of both Congress and the nature of the legislative party system are open to question. This paper examines the nature of legislative careers, the leadership institutions of Congress (committees and mesas directivas), and patterns of floor voting in the Chamber of Deputies to evaluate the relative importance of Chile’s traditional parties and the two new main coalitions in structuring legislative behavior. I conclude that the coalitions are more important institutional actors than has been recognized by most of the literature on the post-transition Chilean Congress. Comments on earlier versions of this paper were offered by participants in the conference on Latin American legislatures held at the Centro para Investigaciones y Docencia Económica in Mexico City (February 1998) and Rockefeller Center seminar series in Latin American studies, Harvard University (March 1998). Special thanks are due to Scott Morgenstern, for including follow-up questions for this paper in his interviews with Chilean legislators and party officials in August 1998. All the usual caveats apply. Presented at the Latin American Studies Association conference. Chicago. September 1998.

The Incumbency Advantage in Multimember Districts: Evidence from the U. S. States

Studies of the incumbency advantage in U.S. state legislative elections have usually been limited to the relatively few states that use single-member districts exclusively. In this paper we provide a method for computing the incumbency advantage in multimember districts, based on the Gelman-King (1990) estimator for single-member districts, and use it to estimate the incumbency advantage in 40 U.S. states over the period 1970-86. We find that the incumbency advantage has increased in states using multimember districts but at a substantially lower average rate than in states with single-member districts. We also find that states in which legislators have more opportunity or ability to perform casework services for their constituents are also those in which the incumbency advantage is larger.

The Increasing Advantage of Incumbency in the U. S. States

This paper uses district-level electoral returns to estimate the size of the incumbency advantage in 24 U.S. states over the period from 1970 to 1986. Our major findings are two: first, the incumbency advantage in the median state roughly doubled over the time period investigated; second, this increase can be explained in terms of the growth of legislative operating budgets and, by inference, in casework and other particularistic services provided by state legislators to their constituents.

Are Politics Local: An Analysis of Voting Patterns in 23 Democracies

This article measures, compares, and analyzes the degree to which local factors, be they candidate qualities or district characteristics, affect electoral politics. It applies Morgenstern and Potthoff’s components-of-variance model to 56 parties or coalitions to measure the “local vote” and shows that only in some cases do local factors manifest themselves in voting patterns. To explain this finding, the authors argue that the type of executive system, ideological cohesion, and a country’s ethnic heterogeneity combined with federalism are all strongly tied to the local vote patterns. Statistical tests also show that in spite of the large literature on the incentives that electoral systems can offer to candidates to pursue a personal vote, the electoral system does not have a clear impact on the local vote.

Organized Factions and Disorganized Parties Electoral Incentives in Uruguay

This paper extends the study of party organization and legislative voting to factionalized party systems. After developing a typology of factional types, it argues that hierarchically organized factions respond to a competing incentive system. Factions have interests that push them to work together for the good of the party, but at the same time they have interests in distinguishing themselves for electoral purposes. Further, the electoral cycle drives the weights of these competing pressures, leading factional cooperation to break down as elections near. These patterns and incentives are particularly evident in Uruguay, and the paper uses roll call data from that countrys legislature to test the propositions.

Explaining hydrocarbon nationalization in Latin America: Economics and political ideology

ABSTRACT Recent hydrocarbon nationalizations in Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador have renewed debates about the dangers of radicals, populists, or leftists. But, while some of these presidents have acted aggressively towards multinational owners, as a group their policies have not differed greatly from non-leftists facing similar circumstances. To test our hypothesis, we provide a detailed three-variable coding of every Mexican and South American president (for all countries with oil resources), as well as a coding of their policies towards the hydrocarbons industry. The historical review shows that political leaders from all sides of the ideological spectrum have advocated, pursued, or sustained nationalizations, and thus there is no clear relation between these political labels and nationalization policies. An examination of two alternative hypotheses – timing and starting point – finds that while nationalizations and privatizations do come in bunches, the hydrocarbon policy and economic circumstances that presidents inherit are more likely to determine the policy that they pursue.

Campaigning in an Electoral Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Mexico

This article examines congressional campaigns run by Mexico’s Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) under hegemonic party rule to understand how electioneering helped one of the world’s longest lasting electoral authoritarian regimes (1929 to 1997) to survive. It finds that campaigning provides autocratic regimes information about their constituents and also generates linkages between local and national leaders that facilitate voter mobilization.

Refining the theory of partisan alignments: Evidence from Latin America

In this article we provide a theoretical and empirical evaluation of the evolution of partisan alignments in Latin America since the beginning of the Third Wave of democratization. We first point to a series of limitations of the conventional framework of partisan alignments, namely their disregard of party systems that are only partially or non-institutionalized. Second, we propose a refined framework that is more universally applicable. We then operationalize our indicators and apply our new framework to every democratic country in Latin America to generate a map of the evolution of partisan loyalties in Latin America in the period 1980–2012. Our analysis reveals that the conventional view of widespread partisan dealignment in Latin America is largely inaccurate.