The name is absent

32

leaders tend to decrease the incentives for legislators' individual credit claiming efforts.
In addition, majoritarian internal rules such as a majority-controlled committee system
(Aleman 2006, Aleman and Calvo 2008) would increase party controls over the flow of
legislation traded.

Nonetheless, the characteristics of the Argentine legislative system provide an
ideal scenario to try to match these apparently contradicting principles. This
opportunity is based on the existing distinction among the different kinds of legislation
that can be introduced and passed in the House and Senate. Five types of legislation can
be considered by Congress: presidential decrees, national bills, declarations, resolutions,
and communications.

Presidential decrees are mostly composed by requests of legislative agreement to
appoint ambassadors or judges, and announcements of vetoes¹⁵.

National bills involve major and general topics (i.e. budget, civil and penal law,
regulations, or military decisions), and deal with most of the economic resources. These
proposals match the category of "public bills"¹⁶ in the U.S. They can be submitted by the
executive and by legislators, and are usually the sample used by scholars at the moment
of explaining congressional performance. It is definitely true to state that legislators use
most of the time in committees to discuss these bills and also that these pieces usually
prompt the main struggles in legislative debates. However, without hindering their
Imdeniable importance, they are not representative of the whole picture at the moment
of speaking about the Argentine Congressional performance.

¹⁵ These decrees should not be confused with delegated decrees or constitutional decrees, which entail a
different scope and salience. See Carey and Shugart (1998) and Negretto (2004) for a further discussion.
¹⁶ See Stein and Bickers (1994, 1996).

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