goods and getting TV cameras is clearly higher than that of a dark office in Congress. In
as much, local executives (namely, governors and mayors) are focal points for party
power. Hence, politicians might devote most of their efforts in running for these
positions and winning the spots. If we understand rationality as the use of the best
strategy to attain a particular goal; we also need to observe what the actions of the
agents pursuing that goal are. Specifically, a rational and ambitious politician should do
whatever she can in order to attain her aims. Assuming that legislation is a valid good
that might trigger politicians' recognition by voters, party leaders and interest groups;
short-termed legislators should act strategically during their tenure. The intuition would
suggest that current congressmen's subnational ambition might affect the legislation
they submit. In as much, national legislators do not reach the House without any
previous background. In fact, some of them do arrive after serving as governor or
mayor. Regardless of the motivation of those jumps, we should expect that legislators
will bias their bills towards their former constituents. In sum, career background and
career further ambitions seem to be playing a role in shaping current legislation. I use a
unique dataset of career information, legislative production and contextual institutional
and political information, to test my main hypothesis: ambition shapes legislative
ProductioninArgentina.
The second chapter deals the different theoretical and empirical approaches to
the concept of ambition. It also discusses the extent to which the notion of the "electoral
connection" is restricted to personal-based electoral rules such as the ones in the U.S.
In the third chapter, I include some of the conventional statements about the
effects of electoral rules over legislative behavior, by interacting them with notions of
political ambition. The implications of the traditional views about the Argentine