71
rasa position at the beginning of the congressional mandate. Of course, politicians have
dissimilar backgrounds in many dimensions (former experience in office, tenure in
politics, previous runs). Nonetheless, ambitious politicians with and without a previous
background might try to anticipate their immediate goals. Progressive ambition implies
expectations about performance in further (especially immediate) stages of political
careers. Considering that, as stated, bill drafting is one of the few visible resources in the
hands of representatives; we should expect a prospective behavior by those who seek a
subnational executive position.
Challenger candidates for subnational executive positions face a plethora of
defies in terms of knowledge, diffusion, publicity of ideas and proposals, grassroots
activities, finances, and recruitment of adherents to monitor the fairness of the elections.
In parallel, incumbents for subnational executives have, in general, several advantages,
similar to what is stated in the aforementioned literature in American politics for
Congress, and also in studies of city councils (Krebs 1998, 1999, 2005, Krebs and
Pelissero 2001). Even though no single piece has analyzed what makes Argentine
subnational executives advantaged in their races38, there are several intuitions associated
with the benefits of holding office. First, as repeatedly mentioned in previous chapters,
knowledge of the current executive is consistently higher. Second, subjects in office can
cotmt with staff, contracts, money and other kinds of selective incentives. Those can be
extremely useful for adding allies, doing territorial work, organizing the Election Day
logistic, and, why not, even buying votes39. Third, incumbents with a well established
political capital in the district can vertically bargain with candidates for other positions
38 This is a very preliminary parallel project I started working on.
39 See Brusco, Nazareno and Stokes (2004) and Calvo and Murillo (2005) for a deep discussion on the
topic