Political Regimes and Politicians' Behavior: Evidence from Mexican Legislators

• In Event: The Determinants and Consequences of Legislative Behavior across Regimes

Abstract

Do political regimes affect politicians' behavior within institutions? Democracies and dictatorships are believed to generate very different incentives to politicians, as they are subject to dissimilar principals. Yet this is difficult to demonstrate empirically. We address this issue by exploiting data from Mexico between 1988 and 2012, treating the alternation in office in 2000 as a critical intervention. Specifically, we look at within-individual variation to examine whether national legislators from the ruling PRI who served both before and after the transition show different degrees of responsiveness to voters/party rulers, as measured by bill submission. We further exploit the fact that Mexico’s democratization proceeded at different paces in different states to determine whether it was national or subnational democratization that mattered the most.

Authors

• Adrian Lucardi, ITAM

• Juan Pablo Micozzi, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico

• Jeffrey A. Weldon, Instituto Tecnologico Autonomo de Mexico