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actors in Argentine politics, but to add individual calculations and strategies aside from
collective determinants. Doing so, I forge a more comprehensive depiction of political
activity.
Another relevant contribution of this project has to do with the collection and
organization of basic information. Even though it can be hard to believe for the
standards of information access in more developed countries; no centralized official
records about public officers exist in Argentina. Considering that the list of governors,
mayors and also candidates for these positions was a necessary condition for this
project, I decided to collect the data by myself. As a consequence, researchers will be
able to count with this information in the future and empirically test multiple
hypotheses. In parallel, file creation of a comprehensive archive of ballots between 1983
and 2007 not only constructs a reliable primary source of information, but also generates
a safeguard for the preservation of historical records. This data gathering process and
the databases created as a consequence are substantive contributions themselves,
especially in a so strong federal country as Argentina. Coimting with this information,
further research will be much easier for scholars in general, and for me in particular.
Multiple extensions of the arguments of this piece can be tested. As an example,
incumbency advantage at the mayoral level in multilevel settings can be tested.
Similarly, comparisons between the House and the Senate in terms of goals and strategic
use of bills can be also easily performed.
A substantial new direction with potential impacts on further research is related
with a key distinction made in this project: governors and mayors are not the same. This
differentiation helped opening the "subnational black box" that restricted most of the
province-level analysis to gubernatorial dynamics. Even though it is true that governors