Governors and party discipline at the National Congress: Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri administrations in comparative perspective
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
In the field of the Executive-Legislative Power relations, the issue of party discipline is a focus of great interest. In the case of Argentina, 2001 formalized a crisis of representativeness that has its correlate in Legislative Power. In this sense, especially in Argentina, lately, the study of the role of a previously silenced actor was installed in the specialists’ agenda: the Governor.
The controversial and failed initiative to transform Resolution 125 into law, back in 2008, when despite having a majority in both Chambers the project was rejected, showed that the indiscipline of some governors had its correlation in the both of both ruling, allied and opponent legislators, thus starting a time series that comes to present day, going through three presidential periods.
All this raises new and interesting questions: Has the disciplinary behavior of governors under Cristina Kichner’s leadership been different from that of Mauricio Macri? Does legislative party discipline vary depending on whether the ruling party has parliamentary majority or not? How disciplined are the ruling party deputies and senators and how much opponents? How disciplined is Peronism/Kirchnerism (and all its neologies) when it is in power? And more intriguing: How disciplined is when they are not in power?
The following article aims to answer these questions using roll-call votes of those projects where the governors’ position could be rescued for the period 2007-2019, using the Independence-Territoriality (IT) Index (Coronel & Zamichiei, 2012.)
The results allow us to reinforce some hypothesis and dismiss other claims in existing literature about the role of governor and the legislators in party discipline, while showing the similarities and differences occurred during the presidencies of Cristina Kirchner and Mauricio Macri.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish in this journal accept the following terms of the copyright policy:
- Authors shall retain their copyright (including copyrights) and shall grant to the journal the right of first publication of their work, which shall simultaneously be subject to the Creative Commons Recognition License: No commercial use of the original work or any derivative works is permitted, distribution of which must be made under a license equal to that which governs the original work.
- Authors may adopt other non-exclusive license agreements for the distribution of the version of the published work (e.g., placing it in an institutional repository or publishing it in a book) provided that the initial publication in this journal is indicated.
- Authors are allowed and encouraged to disseminate their work through the Internet (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) after the publication process, which may lead to interesting exchanges and increased citations of the published work. (See The Effect of Open Access).
How to Cite
References
Alemán, Eduardo, Micozzi, Juan Pablo, Pinto, Pablo & Saiegh, Sebastián (2017), “Disentangling the role of ideology and partisanship in Legislative voting: Evidence from Argentina”, en Legislative Studies Quarterly 0 (0).
Ames, Barry (1992), “Disparately seeking politicians: Strategics and outcomes in Brazilian legislative elections”, paper presentado en Conference of the Latin American Studies Association, Los Angeles, October.
Ames, Barry (2000), “Disciplina partidaria en la Legislatura brasileña”, en Política y Gobierno, vol. VII, número 1, CIDE, México, primer semestre.
Calvo, Ernesto (2007), “The responsive Legislature: Public opinion and law making in a highly disciplined Legislature”, en British Journal of Political Science, 37, 263-28.
Carey, John M. (2000), “Party unity in legislative voting”, paper presentado en Congreso de American Political Science Association, Washington, septiembre.
-------------- (2001), “Party and coalition unity in legislative voting”, Working Paper #376, Department of Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis.
-------------- (2002), “Getting their way, or getting in the way? Presidents and party unity in legislative voting”, paper presentado en Congreso de American Political Science Association, Boston, agosto.
Carey, John M. & Yannitell Reinhardt, Gina (2001), “Coalition Brokers or Breakers? Brazilian Governors and Legislative Voting”, Department of Political Science, Washington University, St. Louis.
Chang, E. C. C. & Golden, M. A. (2001), “Competitive corruption: Factional conflict and political malfeasance in postwar Italian Christian Democracy”, en World Politics, vol. 4, nº 53.
Cheibub, José Antonio; Figueiredo, Argelina & Limongi, Fernando (2000), “Presidential power, Legislative organization, and party behavior in Brazil”, en Comparative Politics, vol. 2, number 32, City University of New York Graduate Center and Hunter College, New York, April.
Cheibub, José Antonio; Figueiredo, Argelina & Limongi, Fernando (2009), “Partidos políticos e governadores como determinantes do comportamento legislativo na Câmara dos Deputados, 1988- 2006”, en DADOS – Revista de Ciências Sociais, vol. 52, número 2, Rio de Janeiro.
Coronel, Alejandro & Zamichiei, Bernardo (2009), “El rechazo de las retenciones móviles en el Congreso Nacional: ¿fin de la disciplina partidaria en la Argentina?”, paper presentado en el 21º Congreso Mundial de Ciencia Política, International Political Science Association, Santiago de Chile, 12-16 de julio.
Coronel, Alejandro & Zamichiei, Bernardo (2012), “Los gobernadores, ¿convidados de piedra en la relación Ejecutivo-Legislativo? Construcción de un nuevo instrumento de medición para el abordaje del fenómeno”, en POSTdata 17 (1): 51-98, Buenos Aires.
Coronel, Alejandro & Zamichiei, Bernardo (2013), “Gobernadores, matriz productiva provincial y relación Ejecutivo-Legislativo. Evidencias del caso argentino durante la presidencia de Cristina Kirchner”, en Global Journal of Human Social Sciences - Political Science, Global Journals Inc. (USA), vol. 13, issue 1.
Coronel, Alejandro & Zamichiei, Bernardo (2016), “Observing party discipline at National Congress in Latin American federal systems: The role of governors in Argentina”, en ReMAP Revista Mexicana de Análisis Político y Administración Pública, Universidad de Guanajuato, vol. 5, número 2, julio- diciembre.
Coronel & Zamichiei (forthcoming), “Demoliendo intuiciones: la influencia de los gobernadores sobre los legisladores nacionales. Estudio empírico en la Argentina desde la perspectiva de sus protagonistas”, en proceso de publicación.
Cox, Gary & McCubbins, Mathew (2007), Legislative Leviathan, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Geddes, Barbara y Ribeiro Neto, Arturo (1992), “Institutional sources of corruption in Brazil”, en Third World Quarterly, Routledge, vol. 13, nº 4.
Gervasoni, Carlos & Nazareno, Marcelo (2017), “La relación entre gobernadores y legisladores nacionales. Repensando la ‘conexión subnacional’ del federalismo político argentino”, en Política y Gobierno, vol. XXIV, número 1, I semestre.
Hix, Simon (2004), “Electoral institutions and legislative behavior - Explaining voting defection in the European Parliament”, en World Politics, vol. 2, nº 56.
Jenkins, Jeffery & Nokken, Timothy (2008), “Institutional context and party power: Member participation and leadership strategy in the lame-duck congressional era”, en American Politics Research 39 (4).
Jones, Mark (2002), “Explaining the high level of party discipline in the Argentine Congress”, en Legislative Politics in Latin America, Morgenstern, S. Y Naciff, B. (eds.). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Jones, Mark (2001), “Political institutions and public policy in Argentina: An overview of the formation and execution of the national budget”, en Haggard, Stephan & McCubbins, Mathew (eds.), Presidents, Parliaments, and Policy, Cambridge University Press, New York.
Jones, Mark & Hwang, W. (2005), “Provincial Party bosses: Keystone of the Argentine Congress”, en Levitsky, Steven y Murillo, María (eds.), “Argentine Democracy”, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, Pennsylvania.
Kikuchi, Hirokazu & Lodola, Germán (2014), “The effects of gubernatorial influence and political careerism on senatorial voting behavior: The Argentine case”, en Journal of Politics in Latin America, vol. 6, nº 2.
Kunicova, Jana & Remington, Thomas Frederick (2008), “Party cohesion in the Russian State Duma, 1994 2003. Mandates, parties and dissent: Effect of electoral rules on Parliamentary”, en Party Politics, vol. 14, nº 5.
Langston, Joy (2010), “Governors and ‘their’ deputies: New legislative principals in Mexico”, en Legislative Studies Quarterly, vol. XXXV, number 2.
Mainwaring, Scott (1991), “Politicians, parties, and electoral systems: Brazil in comparative perspective”, en Comparative Politics, October.
Martínez Elipe, León (2000), “Fiscalización política del gobierno. Volumen primero. Fiscalización parlamentaria y extraparlamentaria. Inspección parlamentaria”, Aranzadi, Elcano.
Massicotte Louis & Blais, André (1999), “Mixed electoral systems: A conceptual and empirical survey”, en Electoral Studies, number 18.
McElroy, Gail (2007), “Legislative politics as normal? Voting behaviour and beyond in the European Parliament”, en European Union Politics, Sage Publications, vol. 8, nº 3.
Monaldi, Francisco (2010), “Decentralizing power in Latin America: The role of Governors in national policymaking”, en Scartascini, Carlos et al. (eds.), How democracy works: Political institutions, actors and arenas in Latin American policymaking, Inter-American Development Bank Publications, Washington.
Moon, Woojin (2005), “Decomposition of regional voting in South Korea. Ideological conflicts and regional interests”, en Party Politics, vol. 11, nº 5.
Morgenstern, Scott (2003), “Explicando la unidad de los parlamentarios en el Cono Sur”, en Alcántara Sáez, Manuel y Barahona, Elena (eds.), “Política, dinero e institucionalización partidista en América Latina”, Universidad Iberoamericana, México.
Mustapic, Ana María, 2000, “Oficialistas y diputados: las relaciones ejecutivo-legislativo en la Argentina”, en Desarrollo Económico, vol. 39, número 156.
Ózbudun, Ergun (1970), “Party cohesion in Western democracies: A causal analysis”, Sage, Beverly Hills.
Rice, Stuart A. (1925), “The behavior of legislative groups”, en Political Science Quarterly, vol. 2, nº 40.
Rosas, Guillermo & Langston, Joy (2011), “Gubernatorial effects on the voting behavior of national legislators”, en Journal of Politics, vol. 73, number 2.
Sartori, Giovanni (1976), “Partidos y sistemas de partidos”, Alianza, Madrid.
Shugart, Matthew Soberg (2001), “Electoral ‘efficiency’ and the move to mixed-member systems”, en Electoral Studies, nº 20, págs. 173-193.
Shugart, Matthew Soberg & Nielson, Daniel (1993), “Liberalization through institutional reform: Economic adjustment and constitutional change in Colombia” (paper no publicado).
Shugart, Matthew & Wattenberg, Martin (eds.) (2001), “Mixed-member electoral systems: The best of both worlds?”, Oxford University Press, New York.
Spiller, Pablo T. & Tommasi, Mariano (2000), “The institutional foundations of public policy: A transactions approach with application to Argentina”, en Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, vol. 2, nº 19.
Theaux, Flavia, Fernández Gioino & Arias (2018), “El poder de los gobernadores en la política nacional: evidencias del control sobre los diputados nacionales”, en Studia Politicæ, número 43, Facultad de Ciencia Política y Relaciones Internacionales de la Universidad Católica de Córdoba, Córdoba, primavera-verano.
Tchintian, Carolina (2009), “Gobernadores en política nacional: una revisión teórica”, en Colección, número 20, Buenos Aires.
Uslaner, Eric M. (1985), “Casework and institutional design: Redeeming promises in the promised land”, en Legislative Studies Quarterly, nº 10.
Weldon, Jeffrey A. (2002), “Factores institucionales y políticos de la disciplina partidaria en la Cámara de Diputados de México, 1998-2002”, ITAM, México.
Zubarán, Martina (2013), “¿Influyen los gobernadores sobre los diputados nacionales? Un estudio desde la perspectiva de los actores”, ponencia presentada en XI Congreso Nacional de Ciencia Política, organizado por la Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Político y la Universidad Nacional de Entre Ríos, Paraná, 17 al 20 de julio.