The name is absent

43

I also evaluated including public announcements about career intentions, but this
measure is likely to be excessively subject to speculations and false statements that
might over represent the sample.

Unfortunately, access to the data was not as easy as for legislative information.
Unlike the case of Brazil, where Federal Courts organize elections and keep a unified
record of Ccmdidates and officers (which let Samuels easily collect the data about
subnational positions), province-level Judges are responsible for the organization and
administration of elections. Therefore, information is spread out across multiple units
that are not coordinated by a Federal agency. Thus, the consequence is predictable: no
systematic official records actually exist, not only for candidates for subnational
positions, but also for those elected. Believe it or not, the Argentine state does not have a
list of the mayors, and governors across time. Thus, the first challenge was to gather the
information of those names. The second defy was to get the data about mayoral and
gubernatorial candidates.

For the former goal, I combined information from the Direction of Mimicipal
Affairs (Direccion de Asuntos Municipales) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs with other
secondary sources, such as documents from the archive of the National Electoral
Direction, NGO's information (CIPPEC), and previous databases used in Jones et al
(2002) and Cao (1999). Relying on these resources, and even recognizing that perfection
has not been reached yet, I created the only existing database of governors and mayors
between 1983 and 2008 in Argentina.

In order to fulfill the second goal, I pursued different strategies. First, I contacted
the provincial Judges and asked them data about candidates. Just two provincial Courts
positively answered and submitted the records to me (Buenos Aires and Santa Fe). For

<<   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   >>

More intriguing information