Chapter 6 examines the representational tools that members of Congress who are building or maintaining reputations as disadvantaged-group advocates can employ and how their use of these tools can vary based on the group that they are seeking to represent. The chapter argues that members make choices about representational actions that they will engage in based on the likelihood that their action will attract attention, the risk associated with that attention, and the potential for actually creating policy change. It finds that members of Congress with reputations as disadvantaged-group advocates devote a greater portion of their sponsorship and cosponsorship activities to actions impacting their groups than non-advocates, but that this is conditioned by how deserving of government assistance the group is generally perceived to be, and how well that group’s interests map onto the committee structure.

Institutional variation is not lacking in Latin America's separation of powers system when it comes to endowing legislatures and presidents with policy-making powers. We only witness lack of variation in terms of symmetry across chambers within bicameral systems. Founders never established two chambers and then gave one a significantly different role in the policy-making process than the other. Beyond that limitation, founders have designed an impressive array of policy-making processes across the region.