Defendiendo la Gobernación: Crisis Política, Reformas reactivas y
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Defendiendo la Gobernación: Crisis Política, Reformas reactivas y Supervivencia Política en las Provincias Argentinas Ernesto Calvo Department of Political Science, University of Houston. [email protected] Juan Pablo Micozzi Universidad de Buenos Aires & PEEL, Universidad Torcuato Di Tella [email protected] Abstract: ¿Qué estrategias deberían adoptar los gobernadores provinciales cuando grandes crisis nacionales pueden afectar su supervivencia política? ¿Pueden los gobernadores desligar sus contextos políticos de otros sucesos nacionales que puedan llegar a afectarlos? El presente trabajo analiza cómo los gobernadores argentinos emprendieron importantes reformas electorales para consolidar su posición política y ejecutiva en las provincias argentinas desde la transición democrática de 1983 hasta la actualidad. Se tratará de explicar cómo en un contexto de fragmentación de los partidos tradicionales a nivel nacional, tanto los gobernadores como los líderes partidarios provinciales y, en algunos casos, la Justicia Provincial, emprendieron un proceso de reestructuración institucional y adaptación, con el objeto de disminuir el faccionalismo intrapartidario y reducir el número de actores en el sistema político provincial. A nivel teórico, el presente paper brinda evidencias acerca del comportamiento estratégico de los ejecutivos provinciales ante las externalidades negativas de los efectos de tracción nacionales. Trabajo presentado en el VI Congreso Nacional de la Sociedad Argentina de Análisis Político”, Rosario, 5 al 8 de Noviembre de 2003 Introduction Between 1983 and 2003, 32 constitutional reforms and 38 electoral reforms reshaped Argentina’s subnational electoral map, leading to one of the most diverse and, arguably, complex political systems in the world. By 2003 each Argentine province selected representatives under different electoral rules, controlled by different electoral authorities, and for differently structured legislatures. The differences were not subtle and included single member, multi-member, and mixed member electoral systems; Plurality, D’Hont, and Hare formulas; complex combinations of majority-PR quotas for winners and losers; and a wide variety of electoral thresholds and lemas (sublists). On the other hand, uni- and bicameral legislatures, differently sized, and with quite different constitutional mandates;1 nourished the representative needs –and political machines- of the Provinces’ citizenry and their parties. This remarkable diversity of subnational political systems contrasted with the stable partisan distribution of governors and senators observed at the national level, dominated by the Peronists since the democratic transition in 1983.2 A large number of institutional reforms at the province level,3 therefore, facilitated more moderate changes in the partisan composition of the provinces’ executives and local legislatures. Several authors have previously explained such local political stability by the broader access governors have to federal resources critical to finance their political machines. In this article, by contrast, we focus on the less studied electoral reforms introduced to reduce the emergence of local challengers within and outside the governor’s party. 1 See Escolar (2001), Calvo & Abal Medina (2001) for a complete description. Tomassi, Jones, Saguier, and Spiller; 2003; Calvo and Murillo, 2003. 3 Corbacho (1995) enounced those held until 1996. 2 2 As we will argue, while at the national level the political system begun to display signs of fragmentation and the number of new parties increased; governors, local party leaders, and in some cases even the provincial courts; begun a slow process of shielding and accommodation to reduce intra-party factionalism and to limit the number of entrants in the provinces’ political systems. In the mist of increasing national competition, electoral and constitutional reforms allowed the provincial elites to successfully disengage their local political systems from the damaging competitive effects of the presidential and congressional elections. The two most significant characteristic of the reforms were (i) the legislation of majoritarian instruments to reduce party competition in the provinces, attempting to consolidate the incumbency status of the governing parties and their legislative blocs. Concurrently, (ii) competitive nomination through sub-lists (lemas), to reduce the centrifugal pressure of intra-party factionalism that lead to the emergence of new challengers at the national level. More specifically, thresholds, plurality formulas, and mixed-member electoral systems were introduced to reduce inter-party competition while Lemas, redistricting, and electoral code reforms controlled intra-party factionalism. In a few highly competitive provinces, however, in which the incumbent elites could not control the reform processes -i.e. the City of Buenos Aires, Tucumán-, the lack of majoritarian instruments deepened the party system’s fragmentation and proportional representation was reinforced. On a more theoretical level, this paper provides evidence on the strategic behaviour of governors against the negative externalities of national level coattail effects. It is noteworthy that such negative externalities were not associated with the likely victory of competing parties at the national level but, more significantly, with the increasing 3 competitiveness of Presidential and Congressional races. By describing how electoral reforms can be implemented to moderate the local impact of national level electoral rules and coattail effects, this article provides further insight into politician’s strategic planning in multi-tier electoral arenas. The order of presentation of this article is the following: First, we provide evidence on the increasing party system fragmentation that characterized the last twenty years of party politics in Argentina. We then explain, in the second section, how provincial elites successfully disengaged their provinces from the national trend and the impact that such reforms had on Argentina’s national level party competition. In the third section we provide statistical evidence of these reactive reforms and of the aggregate effect of such reforms in the vote-seat allocation properties of the subnational political systems. Finally, we conclude discussing the comparative implications of our analysis for understanding the relationship between sub-national and national party systems. Political Crises: From the Nation to the Provinces The presidential election of 1989 could be considered the last election of the twentieth century in Argentina. It was the last election confronting the Radicals (UCR) and the Peronists (PJ), in a Duvergerian two national parties competition with a relatively narrow number of provincial parties as pivotal congressional actors. By contrast, 1991 could be considered the first election of the XXIst century, with a triumphant Peronism that barely reached 45% of the vote and a plurality of smaller parties fighting for their political survival. However, the meltdown of the UCR, and later the Alianza coalition, at the national level was not quite followed by a similar meltdowns in the provinces. Not only the Peronists held as expected most institutional seats in a majority of the provinces but the 4 UCR also survived as a significant political actor in a majority of provinces. As it occurred with the conservative Concordancia in the 1930s, however, the UCR survived as an uneven collection of provincial parties while vanishing from competition at the national level. The peronists, to a lesser extent, also showed signs of increasing territorial fragmentation. In the 2003 presidential election, three different peronist candidates won close to 60% of the vote and three different non-peronist candidates split the remaining 40%. The effective number of competing presidential parties grew to around 5 and the territorial distribution of their votes was illuminating: the new party politics in Argentina was no longer that of a nationalized party competition but one of unevenly coordinated local party machines holding significant political enclaves (Figure 1). Figure 1: Territorial Distribution of Three Peronist Presidential Candidates Menem 03 Kirchner Provincias.shp Paisdeptos.shp 0.015 - 0.188 0.188 - 0.302 0.302 - 0.432 0.432 - 0.66 0.66 - 0.913 Rodriguez Saa Provincias.shp Paisdeptos.shp 0 - 0.137 0.137 - 0.236 0.236 - 0.359 0.359 - 0.58 0.58 - 0.815 Rodriguez Saa Paisdeptos.shp 0.007 - 0.076 0.076 - 0.153 0.153 - 0.296 0.296 - 0.557 0.557 - 0.914 N W E S 200 Miles Source: Based on Departamental Data from Escolar (2003), PEEL. The sum of the Peronists votes still averaged or surpassed its usual numbers at the national level, but the territorial structure of the different factions showed that a national 5 committee was not only an organizational chimera (Levitsky, 2003) but a substantive political problem as well. An historical analysis of the different levels of party competition illuminates the increasing fragmentation of the party system during the last twenty years of democracy (Figure 2). From 1983 to 2001, the effective number of competing parties in congressional elections increased from 2.69 to 4.01. Similarly, the effective number of competing parties for the presidential elections grew from 2.43 in 1983 to 4.64 in 2003. Meanwhile, the effective number of competing parties in gubernatorial races declined from 2.69 to 2.4. An analyses of the provincial governments provides therefore a more rutinary and unproblematic view of the political system (Table 1). For the last twenty years, the Peronism controlled close to two thirds of the Argentine provinces. 2 2,5 3 3,5 4 4,5 Figure 2: Effective Number of Parties by President, Federal Deputies, Provincial Deputies and Governor – 1983-2003 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 01 03 2,79 3,03 2,64 4,64 ENCPpre 2,43 ENCPdn 2,69 2,86 2,77 3,05 2,97 2,95 3,15 2,76 2,82 4,01 ENCPdp 2,84 2,9 2,93 3,62 2,79 2,92 2,55 2,65 2,72 3,62 2,6 2,56 2,35 2,4 ENCPg 2,69 ENCPpre ENCPdn ENCPdp ENCPg Source: Own estimation based on PEEL (2003). 6 The UCR and its allies, on the other hand, held close to a fifth of the provinces and a couple of provincial parties maintained their provincial positions with relative ease. High electoral volatility, executive crises, and congressional gridlock at the national level contrasts with low electoral volatility, executive stability, and comfortable majorities in the local legislatures. How did the provinces successfully disengaged their local political systems from the national trend towards higher fragmentation and volatility? As we will show in the next section, different types of reforms allowed local elites to shelter their provinces from the problematic trends observed at the national level. Table 1: Party Winning Governor Elections between 1983 and 1999 Province BsAs Catamarca Cordoba Corrientes Chaco Chubut Entre Rios Formosa Jujuy La Pampa La Rioja Mendoza Misiones Neuquen Rio Negro Salta San Juan San Luis Santa Cruz Santa Fe Santiago 1983 UCR 1987 PJ 1991 PJ 1995 PJ PJ PJ Frente Cívico y Social (UCR)^ Frente Cívico y Social (UCR) UCR Autonomista Liberal UCR Autonomista Liberal UCR UCR PAL/Pdo. Nuevo* PJ PJ UCR UCR PJ PJ PJ PJ UCR UCR M.P.N UCR PJ Pdo. Bloquista PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ M.P.N UCR PJ Pdo. Bloquista PJ PJ PJ PJ Fed. Intervention 1999 PJ Frente Cívico y Social (UCR) PJ PJ Acción Chaqueña UCR PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ M.P.N UCR Pdo Ren. Salteño UCR UCR UCR PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ M.P.N UCR PJ Alianza Alianza PJ PJ PJ PJ Alianza PJ M.P.N UCR PJ PJ PJ Alianza PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ PJ 7 # Mopof Tierra del Fuego # PJ PJ PJ Tucuman Total PJ 12 17 14 Total UCR/ Alianza 7 2 4 Sources: Cited in Calvo and Murillo (2003). ^ 1991 Intervention before the election *PAL from 1993 to 1995 and Partido Nuevo from 1995 to 1997 # Tierra del Fuego was not a province. Mopof Fuerza Repub. 14 PJ PJ 15 5 7 National Crises, Local Reforms Argentina established a federal republic with a presidential executive and a bicameral legislature in its 1853 constitution4. Until 1995 the president was elected in an electoral college voted in the provincial districts. After the 1995 constitutional reform, the president was elected directly by popular vote in a single national district, requiring at least 45% of the votes to avoid a run-off between the two top candidates. Representatives to the lower house were also elected in the electoral districts, the provinces, by simple plurality until 1912, by incomplete list until 1962, and by PR with variable district magnitudes thereafter. National senators, on the other hand, were elected indirectly by the provinces’ legislatures until 2001 and directly by the people thereafter, using a fix majority-minority formula5. The constitution, however, was silent regarding the workings of the political systems in the provinces. The development of the provinces’ electoral rules and governing bodies, in consequence, followed different institutional trajectories, resulting in quite different political systems. 4 5 See Alberdi (1853) and Botana (1993) for a good description of Argentina´s constitutional origins. Abal Medina & Suárez Cao (2003) provide details of the whole history of Argentine electoral system. 8 The earliest electoral systems in the metropolitan provinces6 were usually local hybrids of the simple plurality system that regulated national elections until 1912. While using different district magnitudes, provinces like Buenos Aires, Mendoza, and Cordoba used similar whole party lists that were allocated in full to the winner of the electoral contest.7 The houses where often congruent –same median voter- and symmetric –relatively similar institutional power-; leading to the notion that while not every idea was vented in Congress, all political men collect their checks from the payroll office.8 The national electoral reform of 1912 spurred a wave of local reforms also, leading to the generalization of incomplete lists in many of the provinces. Majority-minority allocation of seats allowed the old conservative factions of the Partido Nacional to retain institutional resources in the periphery as the UCR dominated the national executive first and then the national Congress. Then, before Argentina could jump into the wave of PR that engulfed most new democracies in the first half of the twenty century, the praetorian cycles of military intervention disrupted the political system. It would not be until 1962 that the political dominance of the Peronism in the electoral arena convinced the military and the most important non-peronist parties that strictly majoritarian systems were a political liability. The PR shift in the national elections, however, was unevenly incorporated into the provinces’ constitutions. However, most national territories turned into provinces in the later half of the twenty century did incorporate PR electoral rules. 6 Buenos Aires, Mendoza, Santa Fe, and Córdoba. Ana Maria Mustapic (1990) has shown that such party lists were actually open list that were allocated by simple plurality to the winner of the election. The resulting allocation of seats was therefore less controlled by the party leadership than most scholars recognize. However, the full list with “modifications” elected candidates for only one party by province. 8 “Si bien no todos las ideas pasan por el congreso, todos los hombre políticos pasan por el presupuesto” . 7 9 From 1983 until 2003, the sub-national electoral map changed significantly. A different electoral system became now fashionable –Mixed Member Electoral System-, and the PR system common in the smallest provinces became a liability once fragmentation and not peronism, became the most significant political threat. As Table 3 shows, the electoral systems of the Provinces has few similarities with those of 1983. In fact, only Entre Rios failed to introduce major reforms in the last twenty years (constitutional or electoral). Table 3: Electoral Systems in the Argentine Provinces in 2001 DISTRICT CIUDAD DE BUENOS AIRES BUENOS AIRES CATAMARCA CORDOBA GEOGRAPHIC AL UNIT EFFECTIVE MAGNITUD ELECTORAL FORMULA DEPUTIES AT LARGE 60 D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD SENATORS 8 DISTRICTS 46, 8 SECTIONS WITH VARIABLE MAGNITUDES BETWEEN 3 AND 9 92, 8 SECTIONS WITH VARIABLE MAGNITUDES BETWEEB 6 AND 18 HARE WITH LARGEST REMAINDER. THRESHOLD: QUOTA D´HONDT WITH A TRESHOLD OF 3% OF REGISTERED VOTERS UNI/BICAMENA CHAMBER L UNICAMERAL BICAMERAL DEPUTIES 8 DISTRICTS DEPUTIES AT LARGE 41 SENATORS 16 DEPARTMENTS 16 SINGLE MEMBER DEPARTMENTS DEPUTIES MIXEDMEMBER BICAMERAL UNICAMERAL SENATORS CORRIENTES CHACO CHUBUT ENTRE RIOS FORMOSA BICAMERAL UNICAMERAL UNICAMERAL AT LARGE DEPUTIES AT LARGE 26 D´HONDT WITH A 3% TRESHOLD OVER REGISTERED VOTERS 32 D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD DEPUTIES AT LARGE 27 DEPUTIES AT LARGE 28 SENATORS 16 DEPARTMENTS 16 SINGLE MEMBER DISTRICTS DEPUTIES AT LARGE 30 BICAMERAL UNICAMERAL PLURALITY PLURALITY FOR SINGLE 70. 26 SINGLE MEMBER MEMBER DISTRICTS, PRDEPARTMENTS AND 44 D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD SEATS AT LARGE FOR MULTY MEMBER DISTRICT 13 DEPUTIES PROVINCIAL ES MAJOR REFORMS SINCE 1983 INCOMPLETE LIST: 16 SEATS BY SIMPLE PLURALITY, 11 SEATS TO THE LOOSING CANDIDATES BY D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD INCOMPLETE LIST: ABSOLUTE MAJORITY OF SEATS BY PLURALITY, REMAINING SEATS FOR THE LOOSING PARTIES BY PR HARE. TRESHOLD: QUOTA. PLURALITY D´HONT WITH A 3% LIST TRESHOLD OVER POSITIVE VOTES. LEY DE LEMAS 10 JUJUY UNICAMERAL DEPUTIES AT LARGE 48 LA PAMPA UNICAMERAL DEPUTIES AT LARGE 26 LA RIOJA UNICAMERAL MENDOZA BICAMERAL MISIONES UNICAMERAL 18 MULTY MEMBER DEPARTAMENTS, 18 VARIABLE EFECTIVE DEPUTIES DEPARTMENTS MAGNITUDES BETWEEN 1 AND 4 38. 4 SECTIONS WITH VARIABLE SENATORS MAGNITUDES BETWEEN 4 AND 6 4 DISTRICTS 48. 4 SECTIONS WITH VARIABLE DEPUTIES MAGNITUDES BETWEEN 5 AND 8 DEPUTIES AT LARGE 40 NEUQUÉN UNICAMERAL DEPUTIES RIO NEGRO SALTA SAN LUIS UNICAMERAL BICAMERAL BICAMERAL SAN JUAN UNICAMERAL SANTA CRUZ UNICAMERAL SANTA FE SANTIAGO DEL ESTERO AT LARGE 35 MIXEDMEMBER: AT 43. 24 IN 8 SECCIONES DEPUTIES LARGE OF 3 SEATS AND 19 DISTRICT AND SEATS AT LARGE 8 SECCIONES 23 SINGLE MEMBER SENATORS DEPARTAMENTS 23 60. MULTY MEMBER DEPARTMENTS DISTRICTS, VARIABLE DEPUTIES MAGNITUDES BETWEEN 1 AND 9 9 SINGLE MEMBER SENATORS DEPARTMENTS 23 43. MULTY-MEMBER DEPARTMENTS DISTRICTS, VARIABLE DEPUTIES MAGNITUDES BETWEEN 2 AND 10 MIXEDMEMBER: 45. 19 SINGLE MEMBER MULTY DEPARTMENTS AND 26 MEMBER DEPUTIES SEATS AT LARGE DISTRICT AND 19 DEPARTMENTS MIXEDMEMBER: ONE 24. 14 SINGLE MEMBER MULTY TOWNS AND 10 SEATS DEPUTIES MEMBER AT LARGE DISTRICT AND 14 TOWNS D´HONDT WITH A 3% TRESHOLD OVER REGISTERED VOTERS D´HONDT WITH A 3% TRESHOLD OVER REGISTERED VOTERS D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD D´HONDT WITH A 3% TRESHOLD OVER VALID VOTES SECCIONES: D´HONDT WITH A 22% TRESHOLD OVER VALID VOTES. AT LARGE: PR:, D´HONDT WITH A 5% TRESHOLD. PLURALITY D´HONDT WITH A TRESHOLD OF 5% OF VALID VOTES PLURALITY D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD PLURALITY FOR SINGLE MEMBER DISTRICTS (WITH LEY DE LEMAS) , D´HONDT WITH A TRESHOLD OF 3% OF LOS VALID VOTES FOR MULTY MEMBER DISTRICT PR D´HONDT WITH A TRESHOLD OF 3% OF REGISTERED VOTERS SENATORS 19 DISTRICTS 19 SINGLE MEMBER DEPARTMENTS PLURALITY (LEY DE LEMAS) DEPUTIES AT LARGE 50 INCOMPLETE LIST: 28 SEATS TO THE PLURALITY WINNER, 22 SEATS FOR OTHER PARTIES USING PR D'HONT WITH 3% TRESHOLD. LEY DE LEMAS. BICAMERAL UNICAMERAL D´HONDT WITH A 5% THRESHOLD OVER REGISTERED VOTERS. LEY DE LEMAS D´HONDT WITH A 3% TRESHOLD OVER REGISTERED VOTERS DEPUTIES INCOMPLETE LIST: TWO 50, 28 IN MULTY MIXEDTHIRDS OF THE SEATS TO THE MEMBER DISTRICTS OF MEMBER: PLURALITY WINNER, ONE VARIABLE WHOLE THIRD OF THE SEATS FOR THE DISTRICT AND MAGNITUDES (4-8) AND OTHER PARTIES USING PR 22 SEATS AT LARGE 4 SECTIONS HARE. 11 TIERRA DEL FUEGO UNICAMERAL DEPUTIES AT LARGE 15 D´HONDT WITH A TRESHOLD OF 5% OF VALID VOTES. TUCUMAN UNICAMERAL DEPUTIES 3 DISTRICTS 40. 2 SECTIONS OF 11 SEATS, 1 SECTION OF 18 SEATS. D´HONDT WITHOUT TRESHOLD. LEY DE LEMAS By 2003 five provinces implemented majoritarian mixed-member electoral systems which do not contemplate any adjustments between the different tiers (Shugart and Wattemberg, 2001), and many others are planning to introduce similar ones9. Most provinces raised the formula threshold above the usual 3% used for the congressional elections. Three provinces increased the threshold to 5%, Buenos Aires used the seat quota to elevate the threshold beyond 6% of the votes while Río Negro chose a fixed 22% electoral threshold in each electoral section. Another interesting new “interpretation” of the electoral law was to impose the threshold over the total registered voters rather than over the effective votes. With compulsory registration and turnout rates below 60%, the effective threshold has increase well beyond 3% for the congressional and legislative elections. Interesting cases are the province of Tucumán, where while the nominal threshold has been eliminated, the effective threshold has increases significantly as a result of the use of smaller district magnitudes.10 A Federal Court rulling in the City of Buenos Aires led to the only example in which the nominal threshold was eliminated, a decision resisted by the most important parties of the district. The information provided in Tables 2 and 3 shows other types of reforms introduced to reduce the number of entrants in the political arena and reduce intraparty factionalism. Formosa, Jujuy, San Juan, Santa Fe, and Tucumán enacted Lemas 9 At the moment (August 2003) Salta, Corrientes and Mendoza are discussing whether they will eliminate their high chambers and adopt a mixed-member system in their Legislatures. 10 Tucumán now elects the local representatives in three instead of two electoral districts. 12 (sublists) to allow internal factions to compete openly in the elections, reducing the likelihood of some candidates running outside the official party lists.11 The use of lemas allowed the incumbent governors to receive votes from different party sub-lists while blocking likely challengers from the opportunity to form extra-party coalitions to dispute their seats. Local elites also attempted to minimize the adverse effect of the cottail effects of the presidential and congressional elections. Even, some provincial Constitutions include the express prohibition of holding federal and provincial elections at the same time12. Figure 3 shows the number of presidential or congressional elections that coincide with the local legislative elections. As it is possible to observe, while in 1983 all national elections and local elections were held simultaneously, by 2003 only 4 provinces held concurrent gubernatorial elections with the presidential elections. Of those four provinces, two attempted to benefit from the coattail effects that a presidential candidate from their own province could bring, as it was the case with La Rioja (Menem), and San Luis (Rodrigues Saa). Figure 3: Percentage of Concurrent and Non-Concurrent Elections for Federal and Provincial Deputies – 1983-2003 11 Other provinces that also introduced Lemas for at least some elections during the last 20 years include La Rioja, Misiones, Chubut, Santa Cruz, and Santiago del Estero. 12 Chaco and Tierra del Fuego are typical cases. 13 100% 80% 60% % 40% 20% 0% 83 85 87 89 91 93 95 97 99 2001 2003 YEAR Concurrent Non-concurrent To summarize, by introducing majoritarian reforms, Lemas, and “administering” cottail effects; most provinces maintained relatively narrow levels of party competition and extremely low effective number of legislative parties (Figure 4). Figure 4: Effective Number of Legislative Parties in Provincial Congresses – 1983-2001 Effective Number of Legislative Parties 5 4 3 2 1 0 1983 1985 1987 1989 1991 1993 1995 1997 1999 2001 Year The Majoritarian Properties of the Electoral Reforms 14 Is it possible to verify the majoritarian effect of the reforms introduced in the Argentine provinces? In the following section we use an electoral dataset which includes electoral data for every party in all elections that took place over the last twenty years to measure the majoritarian bias introduced by the Provinces´ reforms. In order to estimate the impact of multiple reform instruments, we pooled electoral data from the Argentine provinces. The dataset includes all vote shares and total seats obtained by every party in every legislative election from 1983 to 2001. It also includes variables indicating whether constitutional reforms and/or electoral reforms where implemented, the incumbency status of governors and the president, as well as control variables for the election year and province. Analyzing pooled data from different electoral systems is a complicated fate. In effect, the relationship between votes and seats is both the result of mechanical properties of the electoral rules (i.e. simple plurality formulas, small magnitudes, etc.) and of the political dynamics that regulate inter party competition (i.e. increasing fragmentation, cottail effects). And, while moving from single member districts to multi-member districts will certainly approximate proportional representation, the effect of more moderate changes will be usually harder to evaluate.13 In order to test the majoritarian bias introduced by the reforms we estimate King and Browning (1987) statistical model of majoritarian representation, which uses a grouped logistic procedure to estimate the relationship between the percent votes of a party and its 13 For example, medium sized PR districts with moderate thresholds (3%) display small majoritarian effects when competition is concentrated in a few large parties but they can induce large majoritarian biases when fragmentation is high. Therefore, reforms that concentrate the vote in a few large parties –i.e. Lemas-, will both reduce the majoritarian bias of the system and the number of relevant parties. By contrast, increasing the legal threshold will have diffuse effect in the number of parties, given that parties do not gain as much from running “in the coalition”, and a more concentrated majoritarian effect, as the number of seats going to small parties will mechanically fall. 15 seat count. In pooled multi-member districts of different sizes, each of which allocates different numbers of seats representing different ratios of each provincial legislature, grouped logistic methods are particularly versatile. In what follows, we describe the dependent variable, the independent variables and their expected signs. The technical details of the model are in the appendix. The dependent variable is the number of seats allocated to Party i, in Province j, in the year y -Sijy -, as a function of a matrix of explanatory variables whose most important component is the log-odds share of vote Vijy. In King and Browning’s (1987) model, an strictly proportional representation electoral system will estimate Vijy=1, while values between 0 and 1 describe submajoritarian systems and values biger than one, Vijy > 1, describe more seats than votes for the winning parties and less seats than votes for the losing parties. In order to estimate the impact of the electoral reforms we introduce several independent variables that describe (i) whether an electoral reform has been implemented, (ii) whether a constitutional reform has been implemented, (iii) whether the province uses Ley de Lemas (sublists), whether there are (iv) presidential or (v) goubernatorial cottail effects, and control variables for the different elections. The electoral reform variable has the value of 0 if there have been no reforms since 1983, a value of 1 for every election after the first reform has been implemented, a value of 2 for every election after a second reform was introduced and higher orders if necessary.14 The Constitutional reform variable also has a value of 0 if no constitutional reform was implemented after 1983, a value of 1 for every election after the first constitutional reform has been implemented, a value of 2 for every election after a second reform, and higher 14 Salta, San Juan, and La Rioja, for example, implemented 4 electoral reforms each. 16 orders if necessary. The Ley de Lemas variable takes the value of 1 if the province uses Ley de Lemas and 0 otherwise. The cottail effect variables for president and governors take the value of 1 if concurrent with the legislative elections and 0 otherwise. An alterantive model also includes a dummy variable indicating whether the incumbent governor seeks reelection and another variable indicating whether the governor held more than 1 non-consecutive term. The Results Table 4 displays the results of the different models. As it is possible to observe, the majoritarian estimates of the province’s electoral systems are relatively moderate ( =1.4). A more intuitive understanding of the model results is provided in figure 6, which shows the relationship between seats and votes displaying the percent of votes in the horizontal axis and the number of seats obtained by a Party in a legislature of 100 seats. As it is possible to observe, on average, a party that obtains 25% of the vote will gain 17 seats (equal to 17% of the virtual legislature depicted in Figure 6). On the other hand, a party that obtains 60% of the vote will gain 63 seats out of one hundred. The effect of the electoral reforms is statistically significant but moderate .06, which should result in about two seats more for the winning parties and 2 seats less for the losers. The effect of Ley de Lemas, on the other hand, is quite substantive. Table 4: Majoritarian Representation in the Province´s Elections Vote Share (LNVP) Bicameral Legislature Legislative Lemas Constitutional Reform Number of Seats obtained by Party i 1.395*** (.022) -.009 (.0395) -.299*** (.055) .018 Number of Seats obtained by Party I 1.402*** (.022) -.003 (.039) -.333*** (.056) .032 17 Electoral Reform Presidential Coattail Gubernatorial Coattail Peronist President Log-Likelihood (.044) .063** (.03) .105 (.068) .23*** (.06) -8177.9623 (.044) .071** (.029) .095 (.069) .186*** (.067) .098 (.035)*** -8150.195 N 46890 46890 Note: Grouped Logistic estimates with standard errors in parenthesis. *Significant at the .1 level, **Significant at the .05 level, *** Significant at the .01 level. Year dummies not reported in the table. The effect of the Ley de Lemas is large and statistically significant. As expected, the enactment of Leyes de Lemas reduces the level of majoritarianism, given that it decreases the effective number of competing parties. More majoritarian competition, therefore, leads to a more proportional allocation of seats given that many small parties that would not obtain seats are reabsorbed into the broader coalitions. One of the interesting findings of the model is the majoritarian effect that comes from running elections separate from the Presidential and Gubernatorial races. Figure 6: Seat-Vote Allocation of Provincial Legislative Seats (Table 4, Model 1 estimates) 18 The Aggregate Effect The argument presented in this paper is that the electoral reforms were implemented in order to shelter governors and elites from the increasing fragmentation observed in the political system. A different way to test this argument is to estimate the likelihood of an electoral reform given an increase in the level of party competition. With this objective, we aggregate the database used in the previous section to run a simple ordered logistic model estimating the likelihood of an electoral reform given changes in the number of effective competing parties, the number of effective legislative parties, whether a constitutional reform was implemented, a variable indicating the district magnitudes, and dummy variables indicating whether the legislature is bicameral. Finally, electoral rules for bicameral legislatures are considerably harder to modify and, therefore, we expect this variable to be negatively associated with the reforms. We also introduce a variable indicating the district magnitude as a control. Theoretically, we should expect that as the number of electoral parties increases, electoral reforms are implemented to prevent the new competitors from seating their candidates in the legislature. However, in order to successfully modify the electoral system, the reformers need control of the current congress. The number of effective legislative parties, therefore, needs to be negatively related to the likelihood of reform. A large number of electoral reforms were introduced while reforming the constitution. In fact, many of the legislative reforms where implemented together with new constitutions that authorized the reelection of governors. We should expect, therefore, that constitutional reforms should facilitate the implementation of electoral reforms. Table 5 shows the results of our analyses. It is noteworthy that the effect of the effective number of legislative parties is considerably larger than that of the effective 19 number of competing parties. This would appear to indicate that control of the reform process is more relevant in explaining reforms than the pressure from new competitors. The most significant explanatory variable is again whether the electoral reform is part of a constitutional reform process, a faith more easily accomplished under unicameral legislatures. Table 5: Estimating the Probability of an Electoral Reform Number of Effective Parties in Votes (Provincial Deputies) Number of Effective Parties in Seats (Provincial Deputies) District Magnitude (Provincial Deputies) Bicameral Legislature Electoral Reform Electoral Reform .33** (.15) .46*** (.16) -.89*** (.32) -.60* (.33) .013*** (.001) -.47 (.35) 1.94*** (.25) Cut 1 .18-.67 .012 (.10) .35 (.40) 1.82*** (.27) -2.46*** (.92) 4.85*** (.96) 2.16-.78 Cut 2 .21-.67 2.21-.78 Cut 3 2.15-.69 4.60-.86 Cut 4 3.6-.72 6.39-.92 6.7-1.2 10.57-1.32 Constitutional Reform Lemas Ejecutivo Lemas Legislativos Cut 5 - 2 Pseudo R .177 .294 N 169 46760 Note: Ordered Logit estimates with standard errors in parenthesis. *Significant at the .1 level, **Significant at the .05 level, *** Significant at the .01 level. Year dummies not reported in the table. 20 Concluding Remarks In 1983 no governor could be reelected consecutively for a second term. By 2003, every single governor could be reelected for two consecutive terms or more, and in six provinces indefinite reelections where legal. Of the six provinces with indefinite reelection, two included Kirchner (Santa Cruz) and Rodriguez Saa (San Luis), and a third one was home to former president Carlos Menem (La Rioja). Those three candidates were the three top vote getters in the presidential race of 2003. In this article we show that electoral reforms in the provinces not only allowed governors to reelect but they also provided the means to regulate political competition within their provinces. Majoritarian reforms and Leyes de Lemas where the two most significant tools used to reduce the number of entrants into the legislatures and to manage intra-party faccionalism. 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