The name is absent

47

becoming a mayor; she might submit legislation to her district, with the goal of
expanding the familiar local cluster of power.

Overcoming Selection Bias

As mentioned, one of the challenges of the coding scheme is the identification of
those bills submitted by a legislator i that target her district of reference. For the case of
the province-level targets, the mechanism is straightforward: it is known in advance
what province each legislator belongs to, and also for which one she has πm or plans to
compete. However, for municipal targets, things become more complicated. As already
pointed out, American legislators, in as much as their British, Australian, Canadian,
Zambian and Botswana's colleagues, are elected in single member districts. Even though
legislative and municipal boundaries may not coincide, it would be easier to find out
what the district of reference of each legislator might be. However, in coιmtries where
legislators are elected at large, or in states or provinces, home district identification is
tougher. There is only one source of certainty and is limited to a particular group: by
definition, those representatives who have run for a mayoral position can be attached to
that district. However, what about the rest? It heavily relies on the availability of
information of each case.

In Argentina, some politicians' territorial pertinence is public and clear; some
others, even though they may have established closed ties with a particular district, may
have not communicated it with a substantial emphasis. In parallel, a particular group of
politicians do not have such a Strong municipality-based attachment, either because they
are purely national politicians, outsiders, technocrats, delegates of interest groups (i.e.

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