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really useful? This rhetoric question anticipates further research lines empirically
assessing the relationships between intra-party competition and legislative behavior.
In sum, this dissertation had several goals at different levels. After overcoming
severe empirical challenges, it resulted in specific findings that contribute to die
Imderstanding of legislative behavior in multilevel systems. First, legislators can act
strategically, and in fact they do it in the Argentine Congress. The use of legislation is a
valuable resource for these non-reelection seekers and they effectively use these bills
whenever they aspire a municipal position. This is true both for defensive (previous
background) and prospective (further ambition) goals, but it does not seem to affect ⅛
gubernatorial candidates from the House. These findings not only show that individual- ⅛
level behavior is relevant for the comprehension of legislative politics in Argentina; but ⅛
also reconciles the traditional party-based explanations with personalized strategic ;
behavior. Doing so, it contributes to the creation of a theoretical artifact that has an
enormous future for comparative research: a general theory of legislative behavior in
multilevel systems with non-static ambition.