Institutional Engineering and the Nature of Representation: Mapping the Effects of Electoral Reform in Colombia Brian Crisp; Rachael

E. Ingall American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4. (Oct., 2002), pp. 733-748.
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Institutional Engineering and the Nature of Representation: Mapping the Effects of Electoral Reform in Colombia
Brian Crisp University of Arizona Rachael E. lngall University of Arizona

Representation can vary depending on whether legislators view constituents as best represented by aggregated, programmatic universal policies or by parochial, particularistic policies. In 1991 Colombia adopted a major institutional reform intended to change the "electoral connection" between voters and senators, encouraging members o the upper f chamber to adopt a more national, programmatic vision. We explain variations in geographic patterns of electoral support in the post-reform era and show how the spatial pattern o votes for a senator influences his f or her "hill style" in terms o bill-initiaf tion priorities. Although reformers created the option o a more disf persed pattern o support, it is still f possible for senate candidates to gain election with geographically concentrated constituencies.These senators have a higher probability o initiating bills with a pork-barrel f propensity.

ne of the most perplexing issues of representation (defined here as responsiveness) is that legislators are elected by a geographically limited sector of the population to represent its interests, and yet their job is to govern the nation as a whole. Pitkin argues that the alternatives are not mutually exclusive; a representative should be responsive to both local and national concerns (1967,215-2 18). The polar extremes of this continuum are elected representatives who pursue exclusively programmatic, universal policies and those who pursue exclusively parochial, particularistic policies. The balance between programmatic and parochial policies is determined by a legislator's "particular constituency" (Pitkin 1967,218). One might expect legislators chosen in small, geographic subunits to favor the parochial or local end of the spectrum. Legislators chosen from a larger geographic unit, including those chosen in at-large nationwide districts, might place greater emphasis on programmatic, national concerns. We examine one country's efforts to use electoral reform to change the balance struck by legislators between parochial and programmatic priorities. Personalistic or clientelistic ties between legislators and their constituents have long characterized Colombian democracy. The adoption in 1991 of a new constitution intended to alter traditional political practices provides us a natural quasi-experiment with which to test hypotheses about the relationship between institutional design and the nature of representation.

Brian F. Crisp is Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Arizona, 315 Social Sciences Building, Tucson, AZ 85721 (crisp@u.arizona.edu). Rachael E. Ingall has an M.A. in Latin American Studies, University of Arizona, Douglass Building, Tucson, AZ 8572 1 (r-ingall@hotmail.com). Research for this paper was supported by the National Science Foundation (Grant # SBR-9708936),the Tinker Foundation, the Center for Applied Spatial Analysis, and the Department of Political Science and the Latin America Area Center at The University of Arizona. In Colombia, the Department of Political Science at the Universidad de Los Andes, the Presidency of the Senate, the Senate's Office of Laws, and the Legislative Archive of the Congress were particularly helpful and supportive. The authors would like to thank Bill Dixon, Kris Kanthak, and Bill Mishler for their comments.

American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46, No. 4, October 2002, Pp. 733-748
02002 by the Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853

BRIAN F. CRISP A N D RACHAEL E. INGALL

Reformers reasoned that if legislators had wider-ranging geographic bases of support, they would focus less on parochial, clientelistic matters. With data from both before and after the adoption of major institutional changes, we test whether the institutional changes they adopted led to the more dispersed patterns of support they sought and whether geographic patterns of support are related to the policies that a representative pursues once in congress. On December 9, 1990, Colombians elected from a nationwide district a seventy-member Asamblea Nacional Constituyente (National Constituent Assembly) to rewrite the Colombian constitution. This election marked the culmination of more than a decade of attempts by Colombian presidents to bring about political reform. The electoral system encouraged excessively particularistic behavior by legislators making them responsive to narrow clientelistic, largely rural networks (Archer and Shugart 1997).Legislators typically neglected national issues, and corrupt practices abounded. Furthermore, members of Congress were not inclined to alter a political system under which they had experienced electoral success.l Presidents were more attuned to programmatic concerns because of their nationwide constituency, but were often unable to push their own policy agenda (including reform attempts) through Congress. Attempts to bypass Congress were frequently foiled by the Supreme Court, and consequently, the majority of Colombians, especially those living in urban areas, felt excluded from the country's political system. Many expressed their resulting frustrations and dissatisfaction through protest and violence (Archer and Shugart 1997; Nielson and Shugart 1999). Protest marches and demonstrations about insufficient services and infrastructure in towns and cities multiplied, general crime levels rose, and "traditional" guerrilla activity in rural areas increased. By 1990, pressure for reform was so great that when voters in a referendum supported the creation of a constituent assembly, the Supreme Court finally allowed this extraconstitutional process. According to Botero (1998), reformers hoped (1) to increase the political participation of regional, ethnic, and political minorities, (2) to rid the political system of clientelism and the associated corruption, and (3) to alter the nature of representation by fashioning an upper chamber for national concerns and a lower house focusing on regional and local matters, albeit after a reapportioning of the districts to correct for the overrepresenta'Under the old constitution, reform was possible only if an absolute majority in both the Chamber and the Senate passed a legislative act. Thus, it was easy for legislators to block reform attempts that did not meet their approval. After several thwarted attempts the executive resorted to extra-constitutional means.

tion of rural areas. Despite hopes for sweeping reform, the most significant changes were those made to the Senate (Archer and Shugart 1997; Nielson and Shugart 1999; Gaceta Constitutional 1991). Under the previous constitution, all legislators in the bicameral Colombian Congress were elected under a closed-list system from circunscripciones territoriales, regional districts congruent with the country's administrative departments and akin to American states. Party leaders had no control over the party label; therefore, several closed lists with the same party label competed in a department. Voters could vote for one member of the Chamber of Representatives and one member of the Senate, with both votes pooled only to the level of the subparty list on which their preferred candidate appeared. Because multiple lists from the same party competed in each district, intraparty competition was rife. Given that candidates had to distinguish themselves from members of their own party, the electoral system enhanced the importance of candidates' personal reputations and encouraged personalistic politics (Carey and Shugart 1995). Reformers left the electoral system for the Chamber of Representatives largely unchanged, but transformed the Senate into a 100-member body elected from a single nationwide district (previous districts ranged in district magnitude from two to fifteen). The Constituent Assembly had been elected from a single nationwide district, and many of its members hoped to replicate their interest in programmatic, national concerns by creating a legislative chamber elected in the same manner. It was hoped that senators would be forced to refrain from reliance on traditional clientelistic machinery, choosing instead to build a national reputation based on their programmatic policy priorities. Furthermore, the political arena would be opened to nontraditional candidates who, lacking a strong regional support base, would be able to pursue a "dispersed strategy" of winning smaller numbers of votes across all the country's departments that would, when totaled, be sufficient to ensure election. The new-look Senate was first elected in 1991 with subsequent elections taking place in 1994 and 1998. These elections provide us with three sets of results to examine the extent of the reform's impact on the nature of representation in Colombia.

Hypotheses
We pursue two basic research questions. Firstly, is a dispersed geographic pattern of support common among the candidates getting elected in the post-reform era?And

INSTITUTIONAL ENGINEERING A N D REPRESENTATION

735

secondly, do senators represent geographically dispersed supporters by initiating programmatic, nationally focused bills?We capture geographic patterns of support with the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI) (Hirschman 1945; Herfindahl1950). For our purposes, the proportion of his or her vote that a senator wins in each department is squared, and these figures are then added together. This sum can vary from .0303, when votes received are distributed evenly across all thirty-three departments, to 1.00, when votes are received in a single department. This measure takes into account the relative size and distribution of a department's contribution to a senator's base of support. We reason that the relative concentration of votes is a function of the length of time candidates and voters have had to adjust to the new incentive structure and of the experience that the legislator and his or her party had under the old incentive structure. As experience with the new rules accumulates, candidates who campaign on broad programmatic platforms with appeal across the entire country are more likely to succeed. Reformers reasoned that voters would use their vote for the Chamber of Representatives to pursue particularistic concerns, and over time, their Senate vote would be used to pursue programmatic issues. Unlike the pre-reform era, when all of a senator's votes came from a single department, it is now possible to win election with small numbers of votes in departments across the entire country. Thus, a would-be senator known as "the environmental candidate," "the health-care candidate," or "the evangelical candidate" may generate nationwide support with citizens for whom these issues resonate. Under the previous system, it was unlikely that there would be sufficient voters motivated by such an appeal in a single department for it to form the basis of a victorious campaign. Looking at the consequences of major electoral reform in Japan, Reed and Thies state, "[tlhere is no reason to assume that the first election under a new system represents the final equilibrium. The best evidence for the strength of various incentives and the final equilibrium point is not how things are at any given point in time, but how things change over time. Equilibrium should be thought of and analyzed as a dynamic concept" (2001, 387). Therefore, we hypothesize that each successive election-199 1, 1994, and 1998should be characterized by increasingly dispersed patterns of support as the impact of the new rules are reflected in campaigning and voters and candidates abandon engrained patterns of clientelistic, geographically concentrated relations. Previous electoral success under the old rules is likely to discourage a candidate from pursuing a new campaign strategy. For one reason, a geographically concentrated support base from the previous electoral era would be

difficult and expensive to abandon. Such candidates might be forced to look across the entire country for votes, but they may try to do so without forfeiting their old strongholds. Thus, we test whether a previous victory in a subnational district, promotes a more concentrated pattern of support. Candidates of parties that prospered under the old rules may also find it difficult to adopt a different electoral strategy. The party itself may have geographically defined networks or machines for delivering votes and campaign norms that make a concentrated pattern of support more likely. The Conservatives and Liberals designed the previous system with its dependence on clientelistic networks and particularistic rewards and dominated electoral politics during the democratic era. Thus, senators from these parties would be inclined to maintain their parochial orientation longer than those from parties who had not fared well or perhaps even existed, under the old rules. Conversely, nontraditional candidates are, in many instances, those unable to gain election under the old system. The new system was designed partly with the aim of making Senate seats more accessible to such candidates. Thus, we also note the partisan identification of each legislator. Time and previous experience may interact. Over time, the average senator may cultivate a more dispersed constituency, but candidates with personal or party success under the previous constitution would be least likely to adopt a geographically dispersed campaign strategy. In other words, we might expect that hardheaded "dinosaurs" who predate the current rules of the game (or who represent parties that did so with success) would be the slowest to recognize new exigencies. Newcomers and the traditionally underprivileged might be quicker to jump at new opportunities presented by a reformed institutional environment. This reasoning leads to the following formal hypotheses: H l : Candidates will seek votes more widely the longer the new rules are in place. H2: Candidates with a previous victory in a subnational district will have a more concentrated pattern of support. H3: Candidates from traditionally strong parties will have a more concentrated pattern of support. H4: Candidates with a previous victory in a subnational district or from a traditionally strong party will be the slowest to build a more dispersed pattern of support. Having delineated possible explanations for the relative dispersion of patterns of support, let us outline

B R I A N F. CRISP A N D RACHAEL E. INGALL

expectations of how these patterns impact legislator behavior. When a legislator's constituents are geographically concentrated, the probability that the legislator will initiate parochially targeted bills in~reases.~ Geographically concentrated constituents are easy to identify and serve with bills that, for example, build schools, pave roads, and construct sporting facilities. A more dispersed group of supporters cannot be represented effectively by the same types of bills. Constituents in one part of the country will not benefit from, or even hear about, village roads paved or elementary schools built in other parts of the country. Instead, legislators must "specialize" in programmatic themes where the goods produced by the legislation are distributed widely (or lack a geographic target).' As with campaign strategies, legislative "hill style" may not change overnight in a new electoral context. Individuals and parties that fared well under the previous set of rules may remain inclined to propose bills that are particularistic and geographically targeted. Thus, legislators who were elected previously in a department-level district, or who come from the traditionally strong Conservative and Liberal parties, are likely to retain their particularistic propensities. Regarding bill initiation patterns, our expectations are as follows: H5: Parochially targeted bills will tend to be initiated by legislators with geographically concentrated support. H6: Parochially targeted bills will tend to be initiated by legislators with a previous victory in a subnational district. H7: Parochially targeted bills will tend to be initiated by legislators from traditionally strong parties.

300 individual senators varied from a concentrated high of almost .957 to a more dispersed low of less than .060.4 The kinds of vote patterns that lead to scores like these, and to the score most closely approximating the average for all senators, are depicted in Figure 1. Electoral success can be achieved in a number of ways, with the new institutional arrangements allowing for multiple e q ~ i l i b r i aCandidates could pursue a variety of .~ strategies between the concentrated and the dispersed extremes to win election. Jaime Calder6n Dussan had the most dispersed pattern of support of any senator elected in the post-reform era. He had never occupied a seat in the national legislature prior to 1994 when he won as a member of a new movement, Educacidn, Trabajo y Cambio Social (Education, Work, and Social Change). He was able to generate widespread support by focusing on the issue of education, and the major teachers' union in the country strongly supported his candidacy. On the other hand, Tiberio Villareal Ramos, whose vote pattern in 1991 most closely approximates the overall average, was a member of the Liberal party elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1982, 1986, and 1990. Finally, Jorge A. Hernandez Restrepo received the most concentrated pattern of support of any legislator in the post-reform era under the label of Nueva Fuerza Democratica (New Democratic Force), a new movement with conservative leanings created immediately prior to the 1994 election^.^
4The average score was ,5079, and the standard deviation was ,2576. The Senate has 100 seats, and there have been three postreform elections.
5A histogram showing the distribution of vote-concentration scores is available from the author. It indicates that senators did not fall into two groups, one pursuing a national strategy for getting votes and the other following a localized strategy. Instead, it appears that a variety of patterns resulted from the new rules.

Patterns of Support for Senators in Post-Reform Colombia

In the post-reform Senate, the sum of squared proportions, or Hirschman-Herfindahl Index (HHI), for the
2For example, in the United States context, Lee (2000) points out that representatives can only claim credit for particularized benefits, including earmarks and narrow categorical programs, because these benefits can be focused on a geographically limited constituency. United States senators, on the other hand, have the option of claiming credit for much broader programs, formula grants for example, because senators represent entire states. In Colombia, the scale is different-the lower house is elected from states and the upper house in a nationwide district. 3Ames (1995a) shows that in the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies, legislators who dominated particular municipalities were more susceptible to offers of pork-barrel rewards from the executive that allowed them to claim credit for "bacon" brought home to their constituents.

6Note that our measure of concentration does not require that the departments (states) be contiguous. Imagine two senators, each of whom got .75 of their vote in one department and .25 in a second department, but in one case the departments shared a common border but in the second they did not. We reasoned that both senators had an incentive to initiate pork-barrel legislation directed at that .75 department (and to a lesser extent the department from which they get a quarter of their votes) and that the vote gain for the senator whose second department was proximate would be quite marginal. Had the districts under consideration been geographically smaller, we might have considered contiguity to be more relevant. Contiguous concentration is typically captured using Moran's I, but it does not treat highly concentrated patterns in a manner we thought appropriate. It looks for patterns or clusters of similar levels of a given variable, and so a senator with .25 of his1 her vote from each of four adjoining departments would score highly on the Moran's I scale with a value approaching 1. However, a senator who received .99 of hislher vote from one department would have a value of Moran's I, close to 0-i.e., no autocorrelation across contiguous departments-because there would effectively be no pattern of similarities.

INSTITUTIONAL ENGINEERING AND REPRESENTATION

FIGURE Vote ConcentrationPatterns 1

Mean- -Concentration---.---------- --. Vote -A ,

ATIdI.\TIC

Venezuela

Percentage of Votes Earned 0% - 2.5% 2.5% 5% 5% - 7.5% 0 - 10% 7.5% L_110%- 15% 115%-20%

1 -

300

0 300 600

Kilometers

The determinantsof vote concentrationin the postreform Senate are presented in Table 1.7 AU our hypothesized causes are statisticallydiscernible (model 1).Prior success of a senator or his or her party under rules that promoted parochialism is positively associated with vote concentration. Prior success of an individual legislator is measured as a dummy variable if the senator had been
'Multicollinearity is not an issue-no two independent variables were correlated at a level greater than .31. Autocorrelation is not a problem given the limited number of time periods observedthree-and the fact that only a handful of senators was electedfor all three periods. Cook-Weisberg tests for heteroskedasticitydid not approach statistical significance at any level.

elected to the Chamber of Representatives or pre-reform Senate from a statewide district. Prior success for his or her party is a dummy variable for membership in the Liberal or Conservativeparties. Contrary to the expectation of reformers, and our hypotheses, increased experience with the new rules is also associated with a more concentrated pattern of support (experience with the new rules is merely a count variable for the number of electionssince reform).We had hypothesized that candidates and voters would adapt to the new rules over time, with patterns of support becoming ever more dispersed. Instead, vote patterns have become more concentrated with time. Given this finding, one might expect that the

BRIAN F. CRISP A N D RACHAEL E . INGALL

TABLE Explaining Vote Concentration in the 1 Post-Reform Colombian Senate

-

Model 1
Experience with the New Rules Previous Victory in a Subnational District Membership in a Traditional Party Experience *Traditional Party Constant
.221** (.030) .050** (.015) .095** (.033) .247** (.034)

Model 2
.095** (.027) .088* (.034) .316** (.050) -.069* (.034) .180** (.033)

Robust standard errors clustered on senator in parentheses. Colombians have elected 300 senators in the post-reform era, but data were missing for 8 individuals, thus our n = 292. *p s .05, **p 5 .01

interaction term for experience and party identification would indicate that candidates from traditional parties would revert more quickly to parochial ways (model 2). This expectation is also refuted. The negative sign on the interaction term indicates that while patterns of support for candidates from traditional parties are becoming more concentrated over time, they are doing so more slowly than those for candidates from new and traditionally small parties. To make these findings more comprehensible, we present predicted values of vote concentration based on simulations where one factor of interest is allowed to vary while all other independent variables are held constant. This simulation-based approach conveys numerically precise estimates of the quantity of greatest substantive interest, vote concentration, and a reasonable measure of uncertainty (a 90 percent confidence interval) about those estimates (King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 2000).8 Assuming that voters and candidates had only one experience with the new incentive structure, and the candidate in question has had a previous legislative victory in a subnational district, membership in a traditional party leads to a vote concentration prediction of .61 1.9 On the other hand, with the same assumptions
*We use the statistical simulation program Clarify (Tomz, Wittenberg, and King 1999) in conjunction with the statistical software package Stata to calculate the expected vote concentration where each independent variable in turn takes on its observed values, while holding all other variables constant at a chosen value. The 90 percent confidence interval for this estimate is .581-. 641.

holding, we would expect a candidate from a nontraditional party to have a score of only .364.1 Clearly, Liberal and Conservative senators are likely to have much more concentrated patterns of support. This is the substantively most powerful of our hypothesized causes: The parties that designed the old rules and prospered under them have a predicted vote-concentration score approximately 1.68 times the size of their counterparts in the new electoral context. Another statistically significant determinant of vote concentration is geographically concentrated constituencies established through a previous win in a departmentlevel district. If we hold experience with the new rules constant at one previous election, and f~ party identification at "member of a traditional party:' the predicted vote concentration for someone without a previous subnational victory is .522,11whereas a senator with such a previous victory is likely to have a pattern of support concentrated at a level of .61 1.12While not as dramatic as the impact of party membership, previous success in a subnational district diminishes the impact that the new electoral incentives have on candidates. Once a constituency is constructed, the pattern of support endures despite changing rules. As already noted, the least expected finding was the effect of accumulating experience with the new rules. We hypothesized, and Colombian reformers assumed, that candidates and voters would adjust to the new rules over time. They did, but not in the expected direction. Reformers reasoned that candidates would seek votes more widely as they became familiar with the opportunities afforded them by the new nationwide district. However, while the reforms adopted made this possible, they did not make it mandatory. After an initial dispersion of votes in 1991, when the mean vote concentration score (HHI) was .423, patterns of support had reconcentrated to .574 by 1994. Prior to reform, senators were elected from departments with between two to fifteen seats apportioned to each according to population. In 1986, in the election of the last full congress before reform, the average winning senator received 33,723 votes. The winning senator with the fewest votes, from sparsely populated Choco, received 16,584 votes. In 1991, the first election after the adoption of a nationwide district, the average winning senator received 35,402 votes, and the winning senator with the fewest votes received 21 ,86 1. Thus, the sheer number of votes required to win did not change dramatically, and there was no formal require1The 90 percent confidence interval for this estimate is ,310-. 416. "The 90 percent confidence interval for this estimate is .470-. 576. 12The90 percent confidence interval for this estimate is .581-. 641.

INSTITUTIONAL ENGINEERING AND REPRESENTATION

TABLE The Effect of Experience with the New Rules on Vote Concentration by Type of Party 2 (from model 2)
Senators from Non-Traditional Parties Senators from Traditional Parties

No Previous Experience One Previous Experience Two Previous Experiences

,269 (.189-,341)

,585 (.543-,629)

"90% confidence intervals in parentheses.

(Assumes that candidates have had a previous legislative victory in a subnational district.)

ment that votes come from more than one department. Simulations for candidates from traditional parties with a previous victory in a subnational district show vote concentration scores of .585 in 1991, .611 in 1994, and .636 in 1998.13Candidates reverted back to a more geographically focused pattern of support as the initial zeal for the expected impact of reforms faded. In model 2 (see Table l), as mentioned above, we interacted experience with the new rules and party membership to see whether members of traditional parties were reverting back to geographically concentrated patterns more quickly. We found that while candidates from both types of parties had increasingly reconcentrated support over time, members of nontraditional parties were doing so most rapidly (see Table 2). Over time, the gap between member;of nontraditional and traditional parties narrowed. In the first post-reform election, the predicted vote for candidates of the traditional parties was more than twice as concentrated as the vote for candidates from nontraditional parties. However, by 1998, the gap had shrunk to 1.38 times more concentrated. - Candidates from traditional parties maintain more concentrated patterns of support than do candidates from nontraditional parties,14 but members from nontraditional parties increasingly recognized that concentrated vote patterns were still a recipe for electoral success. From these results, we can conclude that the reforms adopted by Colombians were not sufficient to achieve the results they desired. They made clear that their intent was to create a chamber where elected representatives would be issues and cam-

paign widely on programmatic themes to achieve a broad base of support. The adoption of a single, nationwide district made this possible, and in the immediate post-reform context, the more dispersed patterns of support indicate that candidates and voters took reformers' intent into account. However, it quickly became clear that although the reforms made dispersed patterns of support possible, they did not make them necessary. Senator Victor Renan Barco Lopez has a pattern of voter support that generally reflects the overall trend identified through our simulations (see Figure 2).15 Barco is a member of the Liberal Party and has secured a seat in the Senate in every race since 1974.16 Prior to the constitutional reforms, Barco was elected from the department of Caldas. In 1994, for example, he received more than 1,000 votes in only one state other than Caldas. We asked him about the impact of the reforms, especially the creation of a single, nationwide district for the Senate, his sense of what "representation" meant, and his methods of campaigning." In his opinion, not much had changed since the creation of a nationwide district (no cambib nada) because a senate candidate without a regional base was still unlikely to be successful (no sale como senador). Regarding representation, he argued that senators must combine regional and local concerns with a focus on larger national issues. Barco claimed that those who do not are unlikely to be reelected. He personally carries out this two-pronged
15Senator Barco's sum of squared proportion of the vote is .428, .770, and .658 for 1991, 1994, and 1998. These figures do not match exactly the predicted values from Table 2 but, of the sena, tors elected in every race from 1986 through 1998, Barco's vote concentration patterns most closely reflected our predicted values.
A

90 percent confidence for these estimates are .542.629. ,581-. 641. and .596-.677 res~ectivelv.
14We be 'Onfident about the extent to which candidates from traditional parties are seeking even more concentrated patterns than they had in 1991. Our simulations do predict higher scores but the confidence intervals encompass the predicted value for the adjacent election(s).

l 3 The

16Prior to 1974 the Liberals and Conservatives alternated power through a national front arrangement. Given the orchestrated nature of power sharing prior to 1974, we begin observation of litical careers after the breakdown of the arrangement, "Interview conducted November 16,2000 in Bogota, Colombia.

740

BRIAN F CRISP AND RACHAEL E. INGALL .

FIGURE Vote Concentration Pattern for Victor Renan Barco Lo~ez. 2 1986-1998

strategy by trying to generate resources for Caldas while establishing a national reputation as an expert on tax reform, especially fiscal decentralization. As a result, he is able to maintain his traditional base in Caldas while picking up votes outside the department. However, his comments about campaigning and the spatial distribution of his support make it clear that "region" still dominates his thinking. Barco only campaigns for reelection in Caldas ("fiera de Caldm no hago nada"), visiting several communities where a "friend" (amigo mio) has reserved a plaza or theater for his campaign stop. Whoever introduces him is provided with a list of the projects he has initiated-such as public housing, schools, and hospitals-and is sure to refer to him as the "Father of the Municipality" (elpadre de2 municipio). While this trend is not what reformers would have preferred, it should be noted that even a vote concentration score of .637 (the predicted score for the elections of

1998 for members of a traditional party with a previous victory in a subnational district) is a far cry from the score of 1.0 that was mandated under the old rules. What remains to be determined is whether more dispersed patterns of support are associated with a different form of behavior once in office.

Parochial versus Programmatic Representation

In order to test our hypotheses regarding institutionalincentives to carry out specific forms of representation, we collected data on patterns of bill initiation in the preand post-reform Colombian Senate. Our research design approximates a natural experiment: we have data from the last complete congress before reform (1986-1990) and the first complete congress after reform (1994-

INSTITUTIONAL ENGINEERING AND REPRESENTATION

TABLE Bill Targets Before and After Electoral Reform 3

Pre-Reform Congress
(1986-1 990)

Post-Reform Congress (1994-1 998)

41 7 77 187 62 32 16 75 33 18 13 729 20 1

Nationally Targeted Bills Number Initiated Number of Unique Sponsorsa Sectorally Targeted Bills Number Initiated Number of Unique Sponsorsa Regionally Targeted Bills Number Initiated Number of Unique Sponsorsa Locally Targeted Bills Number Initiated Number of Unique Sponsorsa Individually Targeted Bills Number Initiated Number of Unique Sponsorsa Total Number of Bills and Sponsors Number Initiated Number of Unique Sponsorsa

219 114 137 68 58 36 75 76 18 23 507 317

aA senator is counted once per target (per era) even if he or she initlate(j more than one bill aimed at a part~cularlevel of aggregation.

1998). Examining the same legislative chamber in the same country only a few years apart holds constant many factors that might otherwise confound our analysis. Using the coding scheme developed by Taylor-Robinson and Diaz (1999), we designated each bill as having either a national, regional, sectoral, local, or individual (including a single legal entity) target.18 In the United States, legislators routinely introduce bills narrowly focused on their own congressional district. Whether the bill actually becomes law is often irrelevant, for a major function of legislative initiation is simply to show constituents that the elected representative has their preferences in mind. "Credit claiming" can take many forms-from commit18Alongwith three colleagues, we collected the bill initiation data from Colombian congressional archives. We discussed the coding scheme at length with Taylor-Robinson and Diaz and learned how they handled bills that might be difficult to categorize. We then selected approximately thirty bills and had each member of the team classify them by target. Where there were discrepancies, a consensus rule was reached about how to handle similar bills. We then collected data on bills initiated during the 1986-1990 and the 1994-1998 legislature. The team member who entered the data on initiator, committee assignment, and chronology of consideration also wrote a brief summary (four to five lines) of the bill's content. He or she classified the bill based on his or her reading of the original text. A second team member then classified the bill based on the first team member's summary. The few discrepancies that remained were resolved through further discussion and occasionally returning to the original text.

tee assignments to votes on the floor to bill initiation (Mayhew 1974; Fenno 1978; Fiorina 1989; Arnold 1990; Jacobson 1997). In Brazil, Ames points out that "deputies introduce legislation with no intention of shepherding their bills through to final passage. Deputies submit bills, the Chamber prints them, and the printed versions (avulsos) are sent to constituents as proof of 'service"' (2001, 142).19Bills that are not national in focus are likely to provide legislative pork for the "folks back home," while bills with national focus are unlikely to target effectively specific electoral constituencies. Table 3 provides an overview of bill initiation trends in the pre-reform and the post-reform congress. As we would predict, and as reformers hoped, the number of
191n Colombia, the number of bills initiated by Senators that actually become law appears to be quite low, but our data on the subject is not ideal. Our data collection occurred in the summer of 1999, shortly after the 1994 to 1998 congress ended. As a result, many bills initiated in the earlier congress were still under consideration. Furthermore, few bills are ever actually declared "dead"instead they languish in committee or at some other point in the legislative process. Thus, it is difficult to say definitively what passage rates look like. With these concerns about the quality of the data, the relative passage rates of bills seem to support our theory. Compared to the 1986-1990 congress, twice as many nationally targeted bills initiated during the 1994 to 1998 congress had already been passed by 1999. The number of local and individual bills passed into law fell by approximately 44 percent between the same two congresses.

742

BRIAN F. CRISP A N D RACHAEL E. INGALL

TABLE Explaining Bill Targeting in the Colombian Senate 4

Post-Reform Congress Only Model 1 (logit)
Vote Concentration Previous Victory in a Subnational District Membership in a Traditional Party Constant lntercept 1 lntercept 2 lntercept 3 Interce~t 4 Wald X* for covariates (degrees of freedom) 22.34*** (3) 30.30*** (3) 37.06*** (3) 47.93*** (3) .881* (.360) .473** (.163)

Pre- and Post-Reform Congress Combined Model 3 (logit)

,531** (.195) .366** (.118) ,254 (.143) -.917*** (.154)

Model 2 (ordered logit)

.750* (.352) .636*** (.149) -.I91 (.175)

Model 4 (ordered logit)

.505** (.188) .483*** (.108) ,195 (. 140)

-. 146
(.172) -.871** (.180)

Robust standard errors rn parentheses n= 749 for post-reform only models, n = 1469 for pre- and post-reform N *p < .05, **p < .01, ***p < ,001

bills targeted at the national level increased dramatically after reform. The number of national bills increased by more than 90 percent, while the number of bills in all other categories combined increased by less than 1 percent (sectoral bills were initiated more frequently and regionally targeted bills less frequently). Given this increased effort towards national agenda items, all other categories of legislation consumed proportionally less of the Senate's time. It would seem that reformers were at least partially successful. While many legislators initiated more than one bill aimed at each target, the number of unique initiators in each category suggests that particular kinds of legislation were not the private reserve of just a small handful of legislator^.^^ Table 4 shows the relationship between a bill's target and the electoral characteristics of its author.21In models 1 and 2 we look at the post-reform congress alone when senatorial candidates were allowed to seek votes
20Aspart of the reform package, the number of senators was reduced from 114 to 100-so the pool of potential initiators is reduced in the post-reform era. 21Multicollinearity is not a major problem-no two independent variables were correlated at a level greater than .43. Robust standard errors were used to ameliorate the effects of any heteroskedasticity.

from throughout the country. Vote concentration scores ranged from .06 to .96 (see the data appendix for more details). In models 3 and 4 we combine the pre-reform and post-reform congress bill initiation data. Senators in the pre-reform congress were elected in departmentwide districts-so, by law they had a vote concentration score of 1.0. In some sense, the latter is a more difficult test of our theory because we will have underestimated the likelihood of any national, programmatic behavior in the pre-reform era. Using ordered logit, we analyzed the probability each type of bill will be initiated by a senator with a particular electoral history. We also collapsed the data to calculate, using logit, the relationship between nationally targeted bills (as opposed to all other types) and the initiator's electoral characteristics. In the ordered logit model, presented below, bills are arrayed on a scale of increasing "parochialism" from national to sectoral to regional to local to individual. In the logit model, individual, local, regional, and sectoral bills are all coded as having a higher potential to serve particularistic purposes.22
-

220~r observations are bill initiator attempts-meaning each bill appears as many times as it has authors (who are senators) and each senator appears as many times as he or she sponsored or cosponsored a bill.

INSTITUTIONAL ENGINEERING A N D REPRESENTATION

TABLE The Probability of Initiating Pork-Barrel Bills 5 (from model 2)

Minimum Observed Vote Concentration Without a Previous Victory in a Sub-National District With a Previous Victory in a Sub-National District Average Observed Vote Concentration Maximum Observed Vote Concentration

,347 (.293-,409) ,434 (.367-,501)

*90% confidence intervals in parentheses. Membership in a traditional party set at its modal value.

Membership in a traditional or a nontraditional party was not significant in any of our models. As we discovered above, party membership has a significant impact on the geographic concentration of support. But once we account for that geographic pattern, senators from different types of parties are indistinguishable from one another in how they carry out representation. Vote concentration patterns (measured with the HirschmanHerfindahl Index) and previous legislative victory in a subnational district (a dummy variable for previous victory in a statewide district for the Chamber of Representatives or the pre-reform Senate) has the expected effect. Geographically targeted bills are more likely to be initiated by legislators, with a concentrated reelection constituency. Previous representation of such a constituency remains important even after we account for a senator's current pattern of votes. We use simulations (based on models 3 and 4) to help interpret our substantive findings. The probability that a bill will be particularistic is determined by the vote pattern and previous electoral base of the initiator. The rows in Table 5 (based on model 3 from Table 4), indicate that the probability of a bill being particularistic or pork-barrel increases with the vote concentration of the initiator. The columns show the extent to which the predicted probability of initiating a project whose benefits can be targeted to a particular constituency increases when a senator has a previous legislative victory in a subnational district. In terms of vote concentration, the biggest substantive gap is between those senators with highly dispersed patterns of support and all others. The predicted probability that a senator's bill proposal will have pork-barrel potential goes up .085 from the lowest to the average observed vote concentration pattern, and .119 from the lowest to the highest. The impact of having served previously a geographically limited constituency is consistent across all vote concentrations. Senators with a previous connection to a department-level district have a nearly . l o greater chance of initiating a bill with pork-barrel propensities. Senators

with a previous victory in a subnational district and at least average vote concentration are more likely to initiate a pork-barrel bill than to introduce a project focused on broad, national issues. Model 4 in Table 4 shows the results of an ordered logit analysis where sectoral, regional, local, and individual bills are not collapsed into a single category. These coefficients and their standard errors are used to run simulations predicting the probability of initiating each of the five types of bills. The predicted probabilities followed our expectations in every category. The probability of initiating a nationally targeted bill decreased with vote concentration and a previous victory in subnational district, and the inverse was true for every other type of bill. In Table 6 we report the predicted probability of initiating national and local bills-the two archetypes of programmatic versus parochial representation.23Again, it is senators with the most dispersed patterns of electoral support who stand Nationally targeted bills are always the single most frequent type of bill predicted, but their likelihood varies significantly across previous and current patterns of support. If geographically dispersed voters elect senators who have no historical connection to a single department, the probability that those senators will initiate a nationally targeted bill any time they introduce a piece of legislation is .665. This is .23 1 points greater than the probability for a senator with a historical geographic constituency and a continued concentrated pattern of support. The prospects of initiating a locally
23Likethe predicted values reported for local bills in Table 6, it was possible to discern those with a previous victory from those without, as well as those with the most dispersed pattern of support from those with an average or more concentrated pattern. What was often less clear was the predicted difference between senators with average vote concentration scores and those with highly concentrated scores. 24Thepredicted values for senators with average and most concentrated patterns of support are in the direction we predicted, but the confidence intervals around these predictions indicate that we should be circumspect about stressing differences between these categories.

BRIAN F. CRISP A N D RACHAEL E. INGALL

TABLE Probabilities of Initiating National and Local Bills 6 (from model 4)

Minimum Observed Vote Concentration Probabilities of Initiating National Bills No Victory in a Subnational District Victory in a Subnational District Probabilities of Initiating Local Bills No Victory in a Subnational District Victory in a Subnational District
,665 (.612-,719)

Average Observed Vote Concentration

Maximum Observed Vote Concentration

,080 (.063-,099) ,121 (.094-. 149)

90% confidence interval in parentheses. Membership in a traditional party set at its modal value

targeted piece of legislation follow an inverse pattern, changing by nearly .l from the lowest to highest predicted probability. The detailed legislative records of two selected senators are presented to illustrate how representation varies based on geographic patterns of support. We chose these illustrative examples based on variation in our independent variables-geographic patterns of support and historical relationship to a single department. While no individual legislator represents exactly the predicted values presented in Tables 5 and 6, the following examples come close. Senator Juan Martin Caicedo Ferrer, a member of the traditionally strong Liberal party, was elected in 1994with a relatively dispersed vote pattern (HHI = .3571, see Figure 3). He had not been elected to Congress previously, but had served as mayor of Bogota from 1990 through 1991. Prior to that he had a distinguished career in the business sector both in Cali and nationally, including a stint as president of National Federation of Merchants (Federacidn Nacional de Comerciantes-FENALCO) from 1978 through 1987 (Candidatos Visibles 2000). During the 1994-1998 term, he initiated twenty-two bills, fifteen (nearly 70 percent) of which were national in focus. These bills dealt with several diverse issues, including efforts to increase penalties for sexual offenses, to reform the customs collection agency, to stamp out administrative corruption, and to regularize retirement and disability pensions. All of the bills that were not national in focus were designed to reform the governance of Santafk de Bogota-the federal district. We interviewed Caicedo Ferrer's legislative assistant, Francisco Suarez, about the senator's understanding of representation, campaign

strategy, base of support, and bill initiation pattern.25 Suarez said that the senator relied on the association of his name with popular stands on prominent issues to generate support (in Colombia this is somewhat ambiguously referred to as a voto de opinidn). To campaign nationally, he uses the mass media to effectively spread news of his accomplishments in Congress.26 Suarez complained that it was difficult to break the old department-based patterns of support, maintained by longstanding clientelistic networks, and to sustain Caicedo's methods of winning reelection. Parmenio Cukllar Bastidas had been elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1990 representing a coalition of parties, but the Congress was dissolved by the National Constituent Assembly shortly thereafter. He won election to the Senate in 1991 as a Liberal and reelection in 1994 as a member of the Movimiento Nueva Colombia (New Colombia Movement). During the 1994-1998 term, he initiated a dozen bills, and nearly 60 percent of them had particularistic qualities. These bills included homage to a notable local poet, the celebration of the 65th anniversary of the rebuilding of a small town, recognition of 100 years of labor by the Capuchin Brothers (a religious order) in three particular departments, and the creation of a postage stamp honoring a regional university. The bill paying homage to the poet included provisions for purchasing his birthplace, increasing the budget of the re-

251nterview conducted November 15,2000 in Bogota, Colombia. 26Duringour visit to his office we were given copies of op-ed pieces that Caicedo regularly published in the country's major newspapers and magazines.

INSTITUTIONAL ENGINEERING AND REPRESENTATION

745

FIGURE 3

Vote Concentration Patterns for Bill Initiators

gional university, sculpting a bust in his honor, painting his portrait, and issuing a postage stamp bearing his likeness (the proceeds from which would accrue to the department government). The bill celebrating the rebuilding of Cumbral included provisions to pave several local roads and to build three schools in the area. All of these activities were to take place in Narhio where the senator earned nearly 88 percent of his vote (see Figure 3). Cukllar narrowly lost his bid for reelection to the Senate in 1998, but he used this legislative record to help propel himself to the governorship of Nariiio in October 2000. Our models and interviews indicate that Colombian legislators are fully aware of their patterns of electoral support and that they tailor their behavior to reflect the relative geographic concentration of their constituents. The adoption of a single, nationwide district for the

Senate's 100 seats means that the "electoral connection" between voters and senators can vary spatially from senator to senator (Mayhew 1974). Political reformers were correct in assuming that highly concentrated vote patterns are inversely related to interest in national issues. One of the reformers' primary goals was to fashion the Senate into a legislative chamber that would tackle some of the very tough issues currently confronting Colombia. It is now possible for candidates to campaign widely for support, and when elected, those same candidates are indeed more national in their orientation. However, citizens' expectations that all senators would change their behavior may have been unrealistic. In particular, the assumption that all senators would cultivate a national constituency was clearly mistaken. Thus, many deem the reforms a failure.

BRIAN F. CRISP A N D RACHAEL E. INGALL

Getting the Engineering Right

While Colombian reformers did not entirely achieve their goal of persuading candidates to think in terms of a nationwide constituency, some dispersion of votes has taken place. Where it has, it contributes to more programmatic legislative behavior. Candidates have discovered that a variety of strategies-mixing parochial and programmatic concerns-are available to them as successful means of getting elected. Despite a reconcentration of constituent bases in successive post-reform elections, the average senator still captures support more widely than prior to reform. Some senators have clearly recognized the potential for a career based on issues of national importance. A major hindrance to achieving a more programmatic form of representation in Colombia is the continued use of personal lists. Members from the same party compete against one another in general elections, and party leaders do not restrict the use of the party label through any formal nomination procedure.27As a result, candidates, including incumbents, must build a personal reputation to distinguish themselves from co-partisans. This is a major incentive for candidates to focus on porkbarrel rewards rather than on what their party has done while in office. Drafters of the new constitution recognized the role of a more dispersed base of support in encouraging legislators to think less parochially, but did not eliminate other personal vote seeking incentives-most notably intraparty competition in general elections. A more dispersed constituency encourages the introduction of nationally targeted legislation, even while intraparty competition persists. More pervasive attention to programmatic concerns is unlikely as long as concentrated constituencies are still possible and intraparty competition is institutionalized. Several countries (Colombia, Israel, Moldova, Peru, the Philippines, Slovakia, and Uruguay) use nationwide, at-large districts to elect entire legislative chambers. Several other countries have a nationwide, at-large component to their mixed-member systems (where voters have a direct role in choosing a legislator to represent their locality but some element of the proportional representation is maintained for the chamber as whole). Our analysis of
27Candidatesneed only collect a relatively small number of signatures and pay a very modest fee to appear on the ballot under the party label of their choice. In addition, party leaders lack control over other resources, including committee assignments. Assignments are made by election on the chamber floor, and senators can compete with members of their own party for posts. Thus, valuable committee positions cannot be used as leverage to gain programmatic behavior that would enhance the party's reputation.

Colombia shows that when the district magnitude is high, previous electoral success (directly by candidate or indirectly by party) in geographically bounded districts encourages a concentrated pattern of support. Comparative work is necessary to discern the impact of a lower district magnitude (and hence a greater proportion of votes cast for winning candidates), as well as institutional configurations during the pre-reform era, and district variations for the second chamber (where there is one). Nationwide, atlarge districts may create incentives for programmatic, nationally focused behavior by legislators where they are more clearly separated from other races with subnational districts, or where there are a sufficiently small number of seats elected in the nationwide race. Striking a balance between programmatic and parochial forms of representation is not an easy task. Politicians interested in national, programmatic concerns, including presidents, often find their efforts stymied. This has certainly been the case in C o l ~ m b i a Extra.~~ constitutional means were once used to carry out reforms, but the reformers failed to achieve all the desired changes in legislator behavior. The cynicism generated by their failure makes additional changes even more difficult. Institutional change is "sticky" or episodic. Because institutions by definition involve the formalization of a set of practices or norms, they are not merely the reflection of underlying social or economic forces. A disjuncture may emerge between preferences and institutional structures. Unfortunately, just because the disjuncture is sufficiently severe to motivate reform, there is no guarantee that the reforms undertaken will have the intended effect.

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747

Data Appendix
Descriptive Statistics for Explaining Vote Concentration (Table 1)
Mean Vote Concentration (Hirschman-Herfindahl Index) Experience with the New Rules Previous Victory in a Subnational District Membership in a Traditional Party Experience * Traditional Party Standard Deviation Minimum Observed Value Maximum Observed Value

.51 1 .64 .70 .61

Descriptive Statistics for ExplainingVote Concentration (Table 4)

Mean Post-Reform Congress Only Bill Targeta (ordered logit) Bill Target (logit) Vote Concentration (Hirschman-Herfindahl Index) Previous Victory in a Subnational District Membership in a Traditional Party Pre- and Post-Reform Congress Combined Bill Targeta (ordered logit) Bill Targeta (logit) Vote Concentration (Hirschman-Herfindahl Index) Previous Victory in a Subnational District Membership in a Traditional Party Standard Deviation Minimum Observed Value Maximum Observed Value

1.96 .43 .49 .53 .66

1.20 .50 .24 .50 .47

1 0 .06 0 0

5 1 .96 1 1

2.09 .48 .74 .63 .78

.41

aFor the ordered logit models bills are coded as national, sectoral, regional, local, and individual, and in the logit models bills are coded as national or not.

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