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I replicate the same strategy for the province-level analysis, using gubernatorial
background and the same control variables of the previous hypothesis on the right hand
of the equation. As an addition, I am including a covariate measuring whether the
former governor was removed from office due to term limits, in order to assess
hypothesis 3.
Results: Municipal Models
Empirical tests provide a strong support to my first hypothesis. As Table
5.6 shows, having been a mayor before jumping to the House increases the probability of
submitting municipality-based legislation in a positive and statistically significant
manner. Additionally, this evidence is robust across models. I computed predicted
probabilities over the clustered standard errors for different conventional prototypes of
legislators. In all of the cases, the expected increase in the probability of submitting
legislation targeting municipalities of the home province exceeds 40% when a legislator
has had a mayoral background. Table 5.7 captures the relatively small difference in
probabilities when continuous variables are held at the mean, while party membership
and committee chairmanship are varying. The highest relative increases in the chances
of submitting local legislation are in hands of non-Peronists and non-provincial party
legislators (thus, mostly members of the Radical party), especially if they are committee
chairs. In other words, whenever a Radical or a Socialist have a local background, they
submit 43% more municipality-targeted bills than if they did not. Something similar
happens for both Peronists and provincial party members. Overall, the effect is
consistent across categories. All of this can be taken as positive evidence of the defensive
strategic behavior performed by former mayors. Targeting bills to their former