Determinants of party and mayor reelection in local governments: An empirical examination for Argentina during 1983-2011

FREILLE, SEBASTIÁN

Montevideo

Congreso; 9 Congreso Latinoamericano de Ciencia Política; 2017

Asociación Latinoamericana de Ciencia Política

This paper examines the determinants of reelection of parties and mayors in Argentine local elections during the 1983-2011 period. Using a unique and comprehensive database recording local elecion results for over 1600 local governments, we test three potential sources of variation: structural factors, polítical/institutional variables and economic variables. We find that incumbency advantage is strongly and significantly related with a higher probability of reelection. We also find that localities with high structural poverty tend to have higher probability of reelection. Finally, we find that local governments with large population and with municipal charters have lower probability of reelection. For robustness, we recast the electoral data to yield data at the unit of analysis of the electoral cycle. We test the same variables as determinants of the duration of the cylce. The results are very much in line with the main section.