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similar fashion, Samuels (1999, 2003) shows that Brazilian deputies usually seek
subnational executive positions rather than staying in the House, in contrast to Ames'
(1987) and Geddes' (1994) statements. Altman and Chasquetti (2005) show that
significant proportions of legislators (30%) do not seek reelection in Uruguay. Instead,
they look for municipal and cabinet positions. Jones et al. (2002) find that Argentinean
legislators pursue and hold multiple offices and seldom develop stable legislative
careers. In such frameworks, becoming a federal representative may be an important
political position, but not necessarily the final stage of a political career. Finally,
Langston and Aparicio (2008) find that most Mexican legislators had a previous
subnational background and usually look for a state-level executive position after their
term. In spite of term limits, the subnational connection seems to be a powerful source of
political success.
In sum, variation in institutions, practices, and goals makes it tough to interpret
every single legislature with a purely U.S.-based scheme. The use of the causal
mechanisms developed for the American House is a valid research strategy for
comparative research, but it requires extreme theoretical and empirical accuracy.
Ambition in Multi-Ievel Systems
The recognition that ambition must not necessarily be static adds another
component to the analyses. In order to host some kind of progressive ambition, any
political system must involve (by definition, and at least) more than one level of
governance. How could progress be forged, otherwise? The first intuition is to think
about federal countries, where different levels necessarily coexist; however, not every
multi-tier system has to be federal (i.e. Colombia, Chile, Italy or Spain). Moreover, multi-