Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T19:35:44.227Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Electoral Accountability and Particularistic Legislation: Evidence from an Electoral Reform in Mexico

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2020

LUCIA MOTOLINIA Open the ORCID record for LUCIA MOTOLINIA [Opens in a new window]
LUCIA MOTOLINIA*
Affiliation:
New York University
*
Lucia Motolinia Ph.D. Candidate, Wilf Family Department of Politics, New York University, [email protected].
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Being able to hold politicians accountable is the hallmark of democracy, and central to this is the notion that politicians can run for reelection. Most research on reelection incentives compare politicians who are term-limited with those who are not. These studies concentrate mostly on relatively senior politicians in candidate-centered electoral systems. This article leverages a quasi-natural experiment posed by the staggered implementation of the 2014 Mexican Electoral Reform, which lifted an eighty-year-old ban on reelection. The author conducts a difference-in-differences analysis of the hypothesis that reelection encourages legislators to focus more on policies with the highest “electoral yield”—namely, particularistic legislation. Applying a correlated topic model to a new collection of transcripts from 6,890 legislative sessions in 20 Mexican states between 2012 and 2018, this article presents compelling evidence that it does, that the effect is synchronized with the electoral cycle, and that it is larger when the legislators’ political horizons are longer.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 115 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 97 - 113
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Political Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

For valuable feedback and excellent comments, I am very grateful to Amy Catalinac, Pablo Querubin, Arthur Spirling, Alistair Smith, Peter Rosendorff, Hye Young You, Julia Payson, Dimitri Landa, David Stasavage, Antonella Bandiera, William Godel, Jose Maria Rodriguez-Valadez, Tine Paulsen, Taylor Mattia, Arturas Rozenas, Jessica Preece, Nikolas Schoell, Scott Abramson, and Horacio Larreguy. I also thank the anonymous reviewers for useful feedback and participants at the 115th APSA Meeting, the Comparative seminar at New York University, the Quantitative Text Analysis Workshop in Dublin, and PolMeth XXXVI. Carlos Villaseñor provided superb research assistance. The author declares no ethical issues or conflicts of interest in this research. Replication files are available at the American Political Science Review Dataverse: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NOMC0H.

References

Alt, James, Bueno de Mesquita, Ethan, and Rose, Shanna. 2011. “Disentangling Accountability and Competence in Elections: Evidence from US Term Limits.” Journal of Politics 73 (1): 171–186.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashworth, Scott, and de Mesquita, Ethan Bueno. 2006. “Delivering the Goods: Legislative Particularism in Different Electoral and Institutional Settings.” Journal of Politics 68 (1): 168–179.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Austen-Smith, David. 1990. “Information Transmission in Debate.” American Journal of Political Science 34 (1): 124–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bagashka, Tanya, and Clark, Jennifer Hayes. 2016. “Electoral Rules and Legislative Particularism: Evidence from U.S. State Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 110 (3): 441–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barro, Robert J. 1973. “The Control of Politicians: An Economic Model.” Public Choice 14 (1): 19–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bächtiger, André, and Hangartner, Dominik. 2010. “When Deliberative Theory Meets Empirical Political Science: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges in Political Deliberation.” Political Studies 58 (4): 609–629.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bäck, Hanna, and Debus, Marc. 2016. Political Parties, Parliaments and Legislative Speechmaking. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bäck, Hanna, Debus, Marc, and Müller, Jochen. 2014. “Who Takes the Parliamentary Floor? The Role of Gender in Speech-Making in the Swedish Riksdag.” Political Research Quarterly 67 (3): 504–518.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bernhard, William, and Sala, Brian R.. 2006. “The Remaking of an American Senate: The 17th Amendment and Ideological Responsiveness.” Journal of Politics 68 (2): 345–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, Timothy, and Reynal-Querol, Marta. 2011. “Do Democracies Select More Educated Leaders?” American Political Science Review 105 (3): 552–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blei, David M. 2012. “Probabilistic Topic Models.” Communications of the ACM 55 (4): 77–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blei, David M., and Lafferty, John D.. 2007. “A Correlated Topic Model of Science.” Annals of Applied Statistics 1 (1): 17–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bruhn, Kathleen, and Wuhs, Steven. 2016. “Competition Decentralization and Candidate Selection in Mexico.” American Behavioral Scientist 60 (7): 819–836.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cain, Bruce, Ferejohn, John, and Fiorina, Morris. 1987. The Personal Vote: Constituency Service and Electoral Independence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Digital, Cambio, Redacción, . 2020. “Impulsa Ana Miriam Ferráez la regularización de predios en Xalapa.” Cambio Digital, February 23, 2020.Google Scholar
Campos, José. 2020. “Familiares de desaparecidos piden a Biestro crear una ley en la materia.” Cambio Digital, February 24, 2020.Google Scholar
Carey, John, and Shugart, Matthew. 1995. “Incentives to Cultivate a Personal Vote: A Rank Ordering of Electoral Formulas.” Electoral Studies 14 (4): 417–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, John, Niemi, Richard, and Powell, Linda. 1998. “The Effects of Term Limits on State Legislatures.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 23 (2): 271–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casar, María Amparo. 2002. Executive-Legislative Relations: The Case of Mexico (1946–1997). In Legislative Politics in Latin America, eds. Morgenstern, Scott and Nacif, Benito, 114–144. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catalinac, Amy. 2016a. Electoral Reform and National Security in Japan: From Pork to Foreign Policy. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catalinac, Amy. 2016b. “From Pork to Policy: The Rise of Programmatic Campaigning in Japanese Elections.” Journal of Politics 78 (1): 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catalinac, Amy, and Motolinia, Lucia. 2020. “Geographically-Targeted Spending in Mixed-Member Majoritarian Electoral Systems.” Working Paper.Google Scholar
Chong, Alberto, De La O, Ana, Karlan, Dean, and Wantchekon, Leonard. 2015. “Does Corruption Information Inspire the Fight or Quash the Hope? A Field Experiment in Mexico on Voter Turnout, Choice and Party Identification.” Journal of Politics 77 (1): 55–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Unión, Congreso. 2014. “Ley General de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales.” Accessed November 5, 2018. http://www.dof.gob.mx/avisos/2358/SG_230514_01/SG_230514_01.html.Google Scholar
de la Unión, Congreso. 2015. “Ley General de Transparencia y Acceso a la Información Pública.” Accessed November 1, 2018. http://www.diputados.gob.mx/LeyesBiblio/pdf/LGTAIP.pdf.Google Scholar
Cox, Gary W. 1997. Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World’s Electoral Systems. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cox, Gary W., and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1993. Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Crespin, Michael H., and Finocchiaro, Charles J.. 2013. “Elections and the Politics of Pork in the U.S. Senate.” Social Science Quarterly 94 (2): 507–529.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bó, Dal, Ernesto, Frederico Finan, Folke, Olle, Persson, Torsten, and Rickne, Johanna. 2017. “Who Becomes a Politician?” Quarterly Journal of Economics 132 (4): 1877–1914.Google Scholar
Dal Bó, Ernesto, and Rossi, Martín A.. 2011. “Term Length and the Effort of Politicians.” Review of Economic Studies 4: 1237–1263.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Denny, Matthew J., and Spirling, Arthur. 2018. “Text Preprocessing for Unsupervised Learning: Why It Matters, When It Misleads, and What to Do about It.” Political Analysis 26 (2): 168–189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Diario 90 Grados, Redacción. 2020. “Wilma Zavala entrega apoyos en Distrito de Zacapu, Michoacán.” Diario 90 Grados, February 20, 2020.Google Scholar
Elling, Richard C. 1982. “Ideological Change in the US Senate: Time and Electoral Responsiveness.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 7 (1): 75–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferraz, Claudio, and Finan, Frederico. 2011. “Electoral Accountability and Corruption: Evidence from the Audits of Local Governments.” American Economic Review 101 (4): 1274–1311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fiorina, Morris P. 1977. Congress, Keystone of the Washington Establishment. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Freidenberg, Flavia. 2013. Dedazos, Elecciones y Encuestas: Proceso de Selección de Candidatos a los Diputados Mexicanos en Perspectiva Comparada. In Selección de Candidatos y Elaboración de Programas en los Partidos Políticos Latinoamericanos, eds. Sáez, Manuel Alcántara and Rincón, Lina María Cabezas, 159–224. Mexico, DF: Tirant Lo Blanch.Google Scholar
Gamm, Gerald, and Kousser, Thad. 2010. “Broad Bills or Particularistic Policy? Historical Patterns in American State Legislatures.” American Political Science Review 104 (1): 151–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giannetti, Daniela, and Pedrazzani, Andrea. 2016. “Rules and Speeches: How Parliamentary Rules Affect Legislators’ Speech-Making Behavior.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 41 (3): 771–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greene, Zachary, and Haber, Matthias. 2016. “Leadership Competition and Disagreement at Party National Congresses.” British Journal of Political Science 46 (3): 611–632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimmer, Justin. 2010. “A Bayesian Hierarchical Topic Model for Political Texts.” Political Analysis 8 (1): 1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimmer, Justin. 2013. Representational Style in Congress: What Legislators Say and Why It Matters. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grimmer, Justin, and Stewart, Brandon M.. 2013. “Text as Data: The Promise and Pitfalls of Automatic Content Analysis Methods for Political Texts.” Political Analysis 21 (3): 267–297.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Andrew B., and Fouirnaies, Alexander. 2018. “How Do Electoral Incentives Affect Legislator Behavior?” Working Paper.Google Scholar
Harris, Douglas B. 2005. “Orchestrating Party Talk: A Party-Based View of One-Minute Speeches.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 30 (1): 127–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herron, Michael, and Shotts, Kenneth. 2006. “Term Limits and Pork.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 31 (3): 383–403.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herzog, Alexander, and Benoit, Kenneth. 2015. “The Most Unkindest Cuts: Speaker Selection and Expressed Government Dissent during Economic Crisis.” Journal of Politics 77 (4): 1157–1175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hicken, Allen, and Simmons, Joel W.. 2008. “The Personal Vote and the Efficacy of Education Spending.” American Journal of Political Science 52 (1): 109–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirano, Shigeo, and Snyder, James M.. 2014. “Primary Elections and the Quality of Elected Officials.” Quarterly Journal of Political Science 9 (4): 473–500.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI). 2018. “Finanzas Públicas Estatales y Municipales 1989–2017.” Accessed December 3, 2018. https://www.inegi.org.mx/temas/finanzas/default.html#Informacion_general.Google Scholar
Kerevel, Yann. 2013. “A ‘Snakes and Ladders’ Theory of Political Ambition: The Implications of Pursuing a Political Career without Reelection.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.Google Scholar
Kerevel, Yann. 2014. “Loyalty and Disloyalty in the Mexican Party System.” Latin American Politics and Society 56 (3): 93–117.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerevel, Yann. 2015. “Pork-Barreling without Reelection? Evidence from the Mexican Congress.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 40 (1): 137–166.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kerevel, Yann. 2017. “The Costs and Benefits of Party Switching in Mexico.” Latin American Politics and Society 59 (1): 28–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Klein, Fabio Alvim, and Sakurai, Sergio Naruhiko. 2015. “Term Limits and Political Budget Cycles at the Local Level: Evidence from a Young Democracy.” European Journal of Political Economy 37: 21–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langston, Joy. 2003. “Rising from the Ashes? Reorganizing and Unifying the PRI’s State Party Organizations after Electoral Defeat.” Comparative Political Studies 36 (3): 293–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Langston, Joy. 2006. “The Changing Party of the Institutional Revolution: Electoral Competition and Decentralized Candidate Selection.” Party Politics 12 (3): 395–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larreguy, Horacio A., Marshall, John, and Snyder, James M.. 2017. “Publicizing Malfeasance: How Local Media Facilitates Electoral Sanctioning of Mayors in Mexico.” NBER Working Paper 20697.Google Scholar
Lauderdale, Benjamin E., and Herzog, Alexander. 2016. “Measuring Political Positions from Legislative Speech.” Political Analysis 24 (3): 374–394.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Contraste, Linea, Redacción, . 2020. “Sanabria Chávez entrega techumbre a estudiantes del COBAT 12.” Linea de Contraste, February 12, 2020.Google Scholar
Llave-Anzures, Yadira. 2020. “Entregan aparatos funcionales a 202 personas en situación de discapacidad.” La Jornada de Oriente, January 31, 2020.Google Scholar
López Lara, Alvaro. 2012. “Comparando el mapa espacial de las legislaturas estatales de México.” Cadernos da Escola do Legislativo 13 (21): 11–56.Google Scholar
Lara, López, Alvaro. 2016. Gobernadores proactivos y legislaturas reactivas. Una comparación entre el juicio de los expertos y el comportamiento legislativo. In Poderes y democracias: la política subnacional en México, eds. Otero, Nicolás Loza and de Hoyos, Irma Méndez, 131–160. Ciudad de México: FLACSO México: IEDF, Instituto Electoral del Distrito Federal.Google Scholar
Lott, John R. 1990. “Attendance Rates, Political Shirking, and the Effect of Post-Elective Office Employment.” Economic Inquiry 28 (1): 133–150.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lujambio, Alonso. 2002. Gobiernos divididos en once estados de la federación mexicana, 1989-1997. In Gobernar sin mayoría. México 1967-1997, ed. Casar, María Amparo, 319–345. México, DF: Taurus-CIDE.Google Scholar
Maltzman, Forrest, and Sigelman, Lee. 1996. “The Politics of Talk: Unconstrained Floor Time in the US House of Representatives.” Journal of Politics 58 (3): 819–930.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mayhew, David R. 1974. Congress: The Electoral Connection. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Evalúa, México. 2013. “Comunicado de Prensa de Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil—Propuesta de Reelección Municipal contenida en proyecto de dictamen legislativo es bienvenida pero notoriamente insuficiente.” Accessed November 12, 2018. https://imco.org.mx/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Posicionamiento_ReeleccionMunicipal_Boletin.pdf.Google Scholar
Morris, Jonathan S. 2001. “Reexamining the Politics of Talk: Partisan Rhetoric in the 104th House.” Legislative Studies Quarterly 26 (1): 101–121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muthoo, Abhinay, and Shepsle, Kenneth. 2010. “Information, Institutions and Constitutional Arrangements.” Public Choice 144 (1): 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nacif, Benito. 1997. La no reelección consecutiva y la persistencia del partido hegemónico en la Cámara de Diputados de México. México, DF: CIDE, División de Estudios Políticos.Google Scholar
Patrón Sánchez, Fernando. 2014. “Los Estudios Legislativos en México: Una Revisión de su Evolución, Temas y Ambitos de Desarrollo.” Revista Mexicana de Análisis Político y Administración Pública 3 (2): 11–36.Google Scholar
Pérez Vega, Moisés. 2009. “La debilidad institucional de los congresos locales. Límites de la democratización mexicana y de la transformación de las relaciones Ejecutivo-Legislativo.” Andamios. Revista de Investigación Social 5 (10): 253–278.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Primo, David M., and Snyder, James M. Jr. 2010. “Party Strength, the Personal Vote, and Government Spending.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (2): 354–370.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proksch, Sven-Oliver, and Slapin, Jonathan B.. 2012. “Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech.” American Journal of Political Science 56 (3): 520–537.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Proksch, Sven-Oliver, and Slapin, Jonathan B.. 2014. The Politics of Parliamentary Debate: Parties, Rebels and Representation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Quinn, Kevin M., Monroe, Burt L., Colaresi, Michael, Crespin, Michael H., and Radev, Dragomir R.. 2010. “How to Analyze Political Attention with Minimal Assumptions and Costs.” American Journal of Political Science 54 (1): 209–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Reveles Vázquez, Francisco. 2011. “Los estudios sobre los congresos locales en México. Temas y problemas.” Estudios Políticos 23: 11–30.Google Scholar
Rogoff, Kenneth. 1990. “Equilibrium Political Budget Cycles.” American Economic Review 80: 21–36.Google Scholar
Rosas, Guillermo, and Langston, Joy. 2011. “Gubernatorial Effects on the Voting Behavior of National Legislators.” Journal of Politics 73 (2): 477–493.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmond, Rob. 2014. “Parliamentary Question Times: How Legislative Accountability Mechanisms Affect Mass Political Engagement.” Journal of Legislative Studies 20 (3): 321–341.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelson, Larry. 1984. “Electoral Equilibria with Restricted Strategies.” Public Choice 43 (3): 307–327.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schmidt, Vivien A. 2008. “Discursive Institutionalism: The Explanatory Power of Ideas and Discourse.” Annual Review of Political Science 11 (1): 303–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shepsle, Kenneth, Van Houweling, Robert, Abrams, Samuel, and Hanson, Peter. 2009. “The Senate Electoral Cycle and Bicameral Appropriations Politics.” American Journal of Political Science 53 (2): 343–359.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Snyder, James, and Ting, Michael. 2003. “Roll Calls, Party Labels and Elections.” Political Analysis 11 (4): 419–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tien, Charles. 2001. “Representatives, Voluntary Retirement, and Shirking in the Last Term.” Public Choice 106 (1/2): 117–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Titiunik, Rocío. 2015. “Drawing Your Senator from a Jar: Term Length and Legislative Behavior.” Political Science Research and Methods 4 (2): 293–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torres-Ruíz, René. 2014. “México y su nueva reforma político electoral.” Revista Mexicana de Estudios Electorales 14: 119–159.Google Scholar
Ugues, Antonio, Vidal, D. Xavier Medina, and Bowler, Shaun. 2012. “Experience Counts: Mixed Member Elections and Mexico’s Chamber of Deputies.” Journal of Legislative Studies 18 (1): 98–112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, Jeffrey. 2002. The Legal and Partisan Framework of the Legislative Delegation of the Budget in Mexico. In Legislative Politics in Latin America, eds. Morgenstern, Scott and Nacif, Benito, 377–410. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weldon, Jeffrey. 2003. El Congreso, las Maquinarias Políticas Locales y el Maximato: Las Reformas No-Reeleccionistas de 1933. In El legislador a exámen. El debate sobre la reelección legislativa en México, ed. Dworak, Fernando, 33–52. México, DF: Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión.Google Scholar
Wuhs, Steven. 2006. “Democratization and the Dynamics of Candidate Selection Rule Change in Mexico, 1991–2003.” Mexican Studies 22 (1): 33–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Motolinia Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/NOMC0H
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Motolinia Supplementary Materials

Motolinia Supplementary Materials

Download Motolinia Supplementary Materials(PDF)
PDF 2.6 MB
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.