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located. I am aware that the strategy is not perfect, and that the optimal estimation
would have to include the home district of every single legislator. However, this
measure is the best available by now.
Sample Choice
As frequently pointed out in the previous paragraphs, I gathered information
about every single bill introduced in the Argentine Congress between 1983 and 2007.1
also described the bicameral structure of that legislative branch, highlighting that it is
symmetric and non-congruent. Many pieces in the literature have dealt with the
dynamics in the House Qones 1997, 2002; Mustapic 2002, Jones and Hwang 2005,
Aleman 2006, Aleman and Calvo 2008, Jones, Hwang and Micozzi 2008), while the
Senate remained comparatively poorly explored (Llanos 2003 and Kikuchi and Lodola
2009 are a few exceptions). Thus, the advantage of working with the House is that the
expectations about patterns of functioning, the effects of internal rules and the basic
legislative performance are, at some point, predictable. On the contrary, uncertainty is
the rule in the Senate. Even though I do not deny what an important contribution the
link between careers and legislative performance in a typically territorial Chamber
would be 31; I will limit the scope of the current project to the analysis of the House.
Thus, I will not consider the observations of bills submitted by a Senator, which
Completelyremovescommunicationsfromthesample.
Similarly, I find nonsense to keep legislation submitted by the president in the
sample. I do not care about the presidential delivery of targeted legislation for many
reasons. First, I am looking at the impact of ambition over legislative performance. So
3' This analysis is a logical extension of this dissertation and will be surely developed in further years.