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Articles

Vol. 42 No. 3 (2022)

Party Affiliation and Individual Incentives: Committee Assignments in the Chamber of Deputies in Chile, 1990-2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.4067/s0718-090x2022005000107
Submitted
June 5, 2022
Published
2022-06-05

Abstract

In presidential democracies with strong party systems, the congress shares legislative powers with the executive, and parties strongly influence the behavior of legislators. The law-making process should reflect that balance of power, as the reactive legislative powers of Congress should make committee membership less valuable than in systems where the legislature enjoys proactive powers. The strong party system and electoral rules should also be reflected in committee assignment dynamics. We test 4 hypotheses on the impact of individual (distributional and informational theories) and party level incentives (cartel party and issue ownership theories) on annual committee membership in the Chamber of Deputies in Chile (1990-2018). District and legislator specific characteristics—like the economic activity in the district and the legislator’s professional expertise, respectively—explain committee membership. In some policy dimensions, parties that exercise issue ownership also have more presence in the respective committees.

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