Between permanence and dissapearance. The evolution of legislative groups in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies during Kirchnerism (2009-2015)

Abstract

The legislative groups are fundamental actors in the internal operation of the Argentine Congress, they group all the legislators, they are essential for the coordination of the legislative tasks, and they are the institutions representing the popular vote in the Legislative Power. On several occasions, the number of legislative groups has been used as an indicator to demonstrate the fragmentation level of party systems. Still, there have not been studies that allow obtaining a general perspective on the legislative group's genesis, fusion or behaviour. This document takes the legislative groups as a unit of analysis, in this sense we seek to describe the dynamics and the evolution process of the legislative groups, in the Chamber of Deputies of the Argentine Congress between 2009 and 2015. It also identifies the existing associations of birth and disintegration of groups, the factors explaining the creation and dissolution of groups, their fragmentation up to the level of monoblocks and their political position as official, allies or opponents of the executive power. This quantitative study looks forward, to contribute to the analysis and investigation of other topics of the legislative research such as the party-switching and party discipline, among others. The results of the study have shown a high fragmentation of legislative groups, and a variation in the behaviour of the medium size party groups and monoblocks, as well as in the allies and opposition groups.