Keeping a Seat in Congress: Provincial Party Bosses and the Survival of Argentine Legislators

What effect does provincial-level politics have on the ability of Argentine legislators to survive in office? We develop a game-theoretic model of incumbent renomination and derive two related hypotheses on the variation in the time a national deputy will survive in office. We argue that the brevity of Argentine congressional careers can be explained by the disproportional power held by local party leaders vis-a-vis incumbent legislators. Drawing upon a novel data set on the composition of the Argentine Chamber of Deputies between 1983 and 1997, our expectations are tested through censored Weibull regression. Our hypotheses are supported by the analysis. We find the probability of staying in the national congress decreases with the passage of time. The hazard is mitigated if a legislator occupies a leadership position in the legislature