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Marcelo Leiras

Universidad de San Andres - Argentina, Departamento de Ciencias Sociales, Faculty Member

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A political scientist interested in understanding the socio-economic, organizational and institutional foundations of democratic stability. I am currently working on the consequences of the political involvement of landowners and, separately, on the emotional underpinnings of pluralism. I have done work on the nationalization of party systems and the causes of the stability of judges.
Phone: ++ 54 11 4725 7040
Address: Vito Dumas 284
(1644), Victoria, Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina

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Papers by Marcelo Leiras

Compañero, Correligionario, Comprovinciano: Initial Notes on the Nationalization of Legislative Collaboration

by Marcelo Leiras and Ernesto Calvo

This paper analyzes the nationalization of collaborative policy efforts among lawmakers. In doing... more This paper analyzes the nationalization of collaborative policy efforts among lawmakers. In doing so, we distinguish the nationalization of electoral competition and the nationalization of legislator's policy intent. To measure the nationalization of legislative efforts, we assess the degree to which legislators collaborate with members of their district delegations and compare it to the level of intra-party and inter-party collaboration with members from other districts. Though conceptually independent, electoral and legislative nationalization are theoretically related. Declining electoral nationalization may lead representatives to draft territorially targeted legislation and thus to cooperate more frequently with their peers elected in the same district. We interpret the density of co-sponsorhip networks as indicative of legislative cooperation. Exponential random graph models allow us to identify and compare the determinants of this density. A study of 50,825 legislative initiatives proposed to the Argentine Congress in the period 1984-2007 provides support for our hypothesis: provincial co-membership has become a stronger predictor of co-sponsorhip as electoral nationalization declined.

La ciencia política en Argentina 2005-2014: el camino de la consolidación dentro y fuera de las aulas universitarias

by Martín D'Alessandro and Marcelo Leiras

El artículo sostiene que la ciencia política en Argentina está en expansión. Su desarrollo como d... more El artículo sostiene que la ciencia política en Argentina está en expansión. Su desarrollo como disciplina y su relevancia social se han incrementado entre 2005 y 2014. Este argumento se justifica mediante datos de matriculación y graduación de estudiantes, selección y análisis de publicaciones en forma de libros, análisis bibliométricos de publicaciones periódicas y relevamiento de la presencia de politólogos en la actividad política. A pesar de los inevitables debates internos, la ciencia política en Argentina está en el mejor momento de su historia.

Who Wants an Independent Court? Political Competition and Supreme Court Autonomy in the Argentine Provinces (1984–2008)

by Agustina Giraudy, Guadalupe Tuñón, and Marcelo Leiras

Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that i... more Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that is consistent with this expectation. The in␣uence of political competition operates through two distinct mechanisms: fragmentation and turnover. Most empirical studies treat them as mutually reinforcing. We explain why each of these effects should be most clear when the other one is inactive: when power is concentrated only the expectation of turnover may protect judicial autonomy; when turnover seems unlikely only fragmentation should prevent interferences on the judiciary. We test these hypotheses using an original data set comprising all justices that served in the 24 provincial supreme courts in Argentina between 1984 and 2008. Results of a survival model with competing risks support our argument. The effect of fragmentation is discernible when turnover seems unlikely. The expectation of turnover restrains incumbents particularly when power is concentrated.

Who Wants an Independent Court? Political Competition and Supreme Court Autonomy in the Argentine Provinces (1984–2008) The Journal of Politics, volume 77, number 1. Published online December 17, 2014.

by Marcelo Leiras and Guadalupe Tuñón

Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that i... more Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that is consistent with this
expectation. The influence of political competition operates through two distinct mechanisms: fragmentation and
turnover. Most empirical studies treat them as mutually reinforcing. We explain why each of these effects should be
most clear when the other one is inactive: when power is concentrated only the expectation of turnover may protect
judicial autonomy; when turnover seems unlikely only fragmentation should prevent interferences on the judiciary. We
test these hypotheses using an original data set comprising all justices that served in the 24 provincial supreme courts in
Argentina between 1984 and 2008. Results of a survival model with competing risks support our argument. The effect
of fragmentation is discernible when turnover seems unlikely. The expectation of turnover restrains incumbents
particularly when power is concentrated.

Economic Performance, Political Competition and Regime Stability in Postwar Latinamerica

Guillermo O'Donnell's work examined many practically pressing and intellectually challenging prob... more Guillermo O'Donnell's work examined many practically pressing and intellectually challenging problems. This chapter returns to one of them: the influence of economic performance on the stability of political regimes in Latin America. Repeating the gesture of Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (1973), the chapter presents an empirical fact to motivate an evaluation of influential theories in contemporary studies of democracy and then advances an alternative interpretation. The empirical fact is that in postwar Latin America, economic performance seems to have had less of an impact on the survival of competitive regimes than on the stability of authoritarian governments. Most theories of the effect of economic performance on the stability of political regimes predict, on the contrary, that democracies should not be less vulnerable to economic outcomes than dictatorships. My main contention is that these theories place excessive emphasis on the impact of economic performance on income and downplay the relevance of political ambition as a motivation and political competition as a stabilizing mechanism. The alternative interpretation that this chapter advances is that economic performance affects the stability of regimes more because it sets in motion those aspiring to compete for political power than because it ignites the resistance of those hurt by economic outcomes. When political competition is not institutionalized or when it is blocked, poor economic results may encourage and provide aspiring elites with an excuse to irregularly replace incumbents. Thus, signs of government weakness or incompetence, such as bad economic

The Politics of Federalism in Argentina and Its Implications for Governance and Accountability

Over the past decade and a half, a burgeoning literature on the political economy of federalism h... more Over the past decade and a half, a burgeoning literature on the political economy of federalism has emerged assessing the impact of federal institutions on political and economic policy outcomes in comparative perspective. We contribute to this rich literature in two ways. We first provide a "general equilibrium" perspective on the workings of federalism in a highly decentralized middle-income democracy, Argentina, by focusing on the incentives of the main subnational political actors (e.g. governors), the institutional sources of those incentives, and a description of the main features of political competition at the provincial level. Based on the stylized fact that most provinces are local bastions of power dominated by entrenched elites, characterized by scarce political competition, weak division of powers, and clientelistic political linkages, we then build an argument about the reinforcing connection between political dominance at the provincial level and political importance at the national level, and explore its implications for national policymaking, governance and accountability. In particular, we argue that a strong domination of provincial politics is a valuable commodity in national politics: a governor that has a clear control of the provincial contingent in national Congress can credibly exchange future votes in Congress for current fiscal favors; a governor that has a strong grasp on the provincial political machinery can credibly promise future electoral support for a president seeking reelection. Thus, we expect governors that dominate the provincial political sphere to weight more heavily in the national policymaking game. We test the plausibility of this argument using panel electoral and fiscal data on the 24 provinces between 1983 and 2007 and find some initial empirical support for it. * We thank the editor Jean-Paul Faguet and three referees for valuable comments, and Fernando Cafferata, Victoria Paniagua and Guadalupe Tuñón for excellent research assistance.

The politics of federalism in Argentina and its effects on governance and accountability

Manuscript, Jan 1, 2010

Las contradicciones aparentes del federalismo argentino

Who wants an independent court? Political competition and Supreme Court instability in the Argentine provinces (1984-2008)

Universidad de San Andres, Mimeo, Jan 1, 2010

“Los procesos de descentralización y la nacionalización de los sistemas de partidos en América Latina.” Política & Gobierno. 17 (2): 205-241, 2010

Income and Democracy: Theoretical Significance of the Argentine Anomaly

O'Donnell's seminal contention that wealth was not certain to bring about or strengthen democracy... more O'Donnell's seminal contention that wealth was not certain to bring about or strengthen democracy was inspired by the observation and first-hand experience of South American cases. Among them Argentina stands out mainly because it was the arena in which the contrast between socio-economic modernization and unstable democratic rule appeared most starkly. Despite O'Donnell's findings, this discussion reawakened in the early 1990s. Since then, several studies have found a correlation between income and democracy but proposed different interpretations for it. Most of these studies acknowledge that the effect of income on democracy varies across regions and over time (including the possibility that the effect disappears or reverses) and depends on the conditions prevailing in the international system and the domestic social structures. Students of the political economy of democratization stand today as ready as they stood almost forty years ago to share O'Donnell's conviction: the relationship between development and democracy is highly conditional. This study explores the similarities and differences between the causal mechanism that interested O'Donnell and those that capture the attention of contemporary scholarship and, replicating O'Donnell's gesture, takes a closer look at the social and partisan conditions of Argentina in the 1960s to discuss the plausibility of the current theoretical debate.

R. Michael Alvarez, Ines Levin, Julia Pomares and Marcelo Leiras (2013). Voting Made Safe and Easy: The Impact of evoting on Citizen Perceptions. Political Science Research and Methods, 1, pp 117137 doi:10.1017/psrm.2013.2

by Marcelo Leiras and Cippec Julia Pomares

V oting technologies frame the voting experience. Different ways of presenting information to vot... more V oting technologies frame the voting experience. Different ways of presenting information to voters, registering voter choices and counting ballots may change the voting experience and cause individuals to re-evaluate the legitimacy of the electoral process. Yet few field experiments have evaluated how voting technologies affect the voting experience. This article uses unique data from a recent e-voting field experiment in Salta, Argentina to study these questions. It employs propensity-score matching methods to measure the causal effect of replacing traditional voting technology with e-voting on the voting experience. The study's main finding is that while e-voters perceive the new technology as easier to use and more likely to register votes as intended-and support replacing traditional voting technologies with e-voting-the new technologies also raise some concerns about ballot secrecy.

Parties, Provinces and Electoral Coordination: a Study on the Determinants of Party and Party System Aggregation In Argentina, 1983-2005

Todos Los Caballos Del Rey: La Integración De Los Partidos Políticos Y El Gobierno Democrático De La Argentina, 1995-2003

La fortaleza de los partidos políti-cos no garantiza el carácter democrático de las decisiones d... more

Organización Partidaria Y Democracia: Tres Tesis De Los Estudios Comparativos Y Su Aplicación a Los Partidos En La Argentina

Revista SAAP, Jan 1, 2004

Latin America's Electoral Turn: Left, Right, and Wrong

CONSTELLATIONS-OXFORD-, Jan 1, 2007

Instituciones De Gobierno, Partidos Y Representación Política En Las Democracias De América Latina: Una Revisión De La Literatura Reciente

Contribuciones: publicación trimestral de la Konrad- …

Argentina: Problemas Macroeconómicos, Conflicto Social Y Debilitamiento De La Coalición De Gobierno

Rev. cienc. polít.(Santiago)

Relaciones Entre Estado Y Sociedad Civil En La Argentina: Un Marco De Análisis

Construyendo confianza. Hacia un nuevo vínculo entre …

La Incidencia De Las Organizaciones De La Sociedad Civil En Las Políticas Públicas

Acuña, Carlos y Vacchieri, Ariana (comp.)La …, Jan 1, 2007

Desde sus inicios, los consejos consultivos municipales (de aquí en más CCM) han funcionado como ... more Desde sus inicios, los consejos consultivos municipales (de aquí en más CCM) han funcionado como espacios de diálogo social para la articulación y discusión sobre las diferentes políticas. Asimismo, estos permitieron la participación en la ejecución y control de los planes sociales, como también en el diseño y formulación de políticas públicas, y es allí donde se pueden observar las distintas pujas y correlaciones de fuerzas a la hora de la incidencia. En el desarrollo de esta tesis, analizaremos el rol que juegan las distintas Organizaciones de la sociedad civil (de aquí en más OSC) dentro del marco de los consejos consultivos a la hora de incidir en las políticas públicas del municipio. Consideramos que el ámbito local, en este caso el municipio de Morón (provincia de Buenos Aires), es privilegiado para observar y evaluar estos procesos de construcción de los espacios multiactorales, de sus capacidades y potencialidades en términos de iniciativa y de gestión de políticas de nivel local. Como así también de creación de nuevas formas de articulación entre lo público y lo privado.

Compañero, Correligionario, Comprovinciano: Initial Notes on the Nationalization of Legislative Collaboration

by Marcelo Leiras and Ernesto Calvo

This paper analyzes the nationalization of collaborative policy efforts among lawmakers. In doing... more This paper analyzes the nationalization of collaborative policy efforts among lawmakers. In doing so, we distinguish the nationalization of electoral competition and the nationalization of legislator's policy intent. To measure the nationalization of legislative efforts, we assess the degree to which legislators collaborate with members of their district delegations and compare it to the level of intra-party and inter-party collaboration with members from other districts. Though conceptually independent, electoral and legislative nationalization are theoretically related. Declining electoral nationalization may lead representatives to draft territorially targeted legislation and thus to cooperate more frequently with their peers elected in the same district. We interpret the density of co-sponsorhip networks as indicative of legislative cooperation. Exponential random graph models allow us to identify and compare the determinants of this density. A study of 50,825 legislative initiatives proposed to the Argentine Congress in the period 1984-2007 provides support for our hypothesis: provincial co-membership has become a stronger predictor of co-sponsorhip as electoral nationalization declined.

La ciencia política en Argentina 2005-2014: el camino de la consolidación dentro y fuera de las aulas universitarias

by Martín D'Alessandro and Marcelo Leiras

El artículo sostiene que la ciencia política en Argentina está en expansión. Su desarrollo como d... more El artículo sostiene que la ciencia política en Argentina está en expansión. Su desarrollo como disciplina y su relevancia social se han incrementado entre 2005 y 2014. Este argumento se justifica mediante datos de matriculación y graduación de estudiantes, selección y análisis de publicaciones en forma de libros, análisis bibliométricos de publicaciones periódicas y relevamiento de la presencia de politólogos en la actividad política. A pesar de los inevitables debates internos, la ciencia política en Argentina está en el mejor momento de su historia.

Who Wants an Independent Court? Political Competition and Supreme Court Autonomy in the Argentine Provinces (1984–2008)

by Agustina Giraudy, Guadalupe Tuñón, and Marcelo Leiras

Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that i... more Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that is consistent with this expectation. The in␣uence of political competition operates through two distinct mechanisms: fragmentation and turnover. Most empirical studies treat them as mutually reinforcing. We explain why each of these effects should be most clear when the other one is inactive: when power is concentrated only the expectation of turnover may protect judicial autonomy; when turnover seems unlikely only fragmentation should prevent interferences on the judiciary. We test these hypotheses using an original data set comprising all justices that served in the 24 provincial supreme courts in Argentina between 1984 and 2008. Results of a survival model with competing risks support our argument. The effect of fragmentation is discernible when turnover seems unlikely. The expectation of turnover restrains incumbents particularly when power is concentrated.

Who Wants an Independent Court? Political Competition and Supreme Court Autonomy in the Argentine Provinces (1984–2008) The Journal of Politics, volume 77, number 1. Published online December 17, 2014.

by Marcelo Leiras and Guadalupe Tuñón

Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that i... more Political competition should protect judicial autonomy. A host of studies produce evidence that is consistent with this
expectation. The influence of political competition operates through two distinct mechanisms: fragmentation and
turnover. Most empirical studies treat them as mutually reinforcing. We explain why each of these effects should be
most clear when the other one is inactive: when power is concentrated only the expectation of turnover may protect
judicial autonomy; when turnover seems unlikely only fragmentation should prevent interferences on the judiciary. We
test these hypotheses using an original data set comprising all justices that served in the 24 provincial supreme courts in
Argentina between 1984 and 2008. Results of a survival model with competing risks support our argument. The effect
of fragmentation is discernible when turnover seems unlikely. The expectation of turnover restrains incumbents
particularly when power is concentrated.

Economic Performance, Political Competition and Regime Stability in Postwar Latinamerica

Guillermo O'Donnell's work examined many practically pressing and intellectually challenging prob... more Guillermo O'Donnell's work examined many practically pressing and intellectually challenging problems. This chapter returns to one of them: the influence of economic performance on the stability of political regimes in Latin America. Repeating the gesture of Modernization and Bureaucratic Authoritarianism (1973), the chapter presents an empirical fact to motivate an evaluation of influential theories in contemporary studies of democracy and then advances an alternative interpretation. The empirical fact is that in postwar Latin America, economic performance seems to have had less of an impact on the survival of competitive regimes than on the stability of authoritarian governments. Most theories of the effect of economic performance on the stability of political regimes predict, on the contrary, that democracies should not be less vulnerable to economic outcomes than dictatorships. My main contention is that these theories place excessive emphasis on the impact of economic performance on income and downplay the relevance of political ambition as a motivation and political competition as a stabilizing mechanism. The alternative interpretation that this chapter advances is that economic performance affects the stability of regimes more because it sets in motion those aspiring to compete for political power than because it ignites the resistance of those hurt by economic outcomes. When political competition is not institutionalized or when it is blocked, poor economic results may encourage and provide aspiring elites with an excuse to irregularly replace incumbents. Thus, signs of government weakness or incompetence, such as bad economic

The Politics of Federalism in Argentina and Its Implications for Governance and Accountability

Over the past decade and a half, a burgeoning literature on the political economy of federalism h... more Over the past decade and a half, a burgeoning literature on the political economy of federalism has emerged assessing the impact of federal institutions on political and economic policy outcomes in comparative perspective. We contribute to this rich literature in two ways. We first provide a "general equilibrium" perspective on the workings of federalism in a highly decentralized middle-income democracy, Argentina, by focusing on the incentives of the main subnational political actors (e.g. governors), the institutional sources of those incentives, and a description of the main features of political competition at the provincial level. Based on the stylized fact that most provinces are local bastions of power dominated by entrenched elites, characterized by scarce political competition, weak division of powers, and clientelistic political linkages, we then build an argument about the reinforcing connection between political dominance at the provincial level and political importance at the national level, and explore its implications for national policymaking, governance and accountability. In particular, we argue that a strong domination of provincial politics is a valuable commodity in national politics: a governor that has a clear control of the provincial contingent in national Congress can credibly exchange future votes in Congress for current fiscal favors; a governor that has a strong grasp on the provincial political machinery can credibly promise future electoral support for a president seeking reelection. Thus, we expect governors that dominate the provincial political sphere to weight more heavily in the national policymaking game. We test the plausibility of this argument using panel electoral and fiscal data on the 24 provinces between 1983 and 2007 and find some initial empirical support for it. * We thank the editor Jean-Paul Faguet and three referees for valuable comments, and Fernando Cafferata, Victoria Paniagua and Guadalupe Tuñón for excellent research assistance.

The politics of federalism in Argentina and its effects on governance and accountability

Manuscript, Jan 1, 2010

Las contradicciones aparentes del federalismo argentino

Who wants an independent court? Political competition and Supreme Court instability in the Argentine provinces (1984-2008)

Universidad de San Andres, Mimeo, Jan 1, 2010

“Los procesos de descentralización y la nacionalización de los sistemas de partidos en América Latina.” Política & Gobierno. 17 (2): 205-241, 2010

Income and Democracy: Theoretical Significance of the Argentine Anomaly

O'Donnell's seminal contention that wealth was not certain to bring about or strengthen democracy... more O'Donnell's seminal contention that wealth was not certain to bring about or strengthen democracy was inspired by the observation and first-hand experience of South American cases. Among them Argentina stands out mainly because it was the arena in which the contrast between socio-economic modernization and unstable democratic rule appeared most starkly. Despite O'Donnell's findings, this discussion reawakened in the early 1990s. Since then, several studies have found a correlation between income and democracy but proposed different interpretations for it. Most of these studies acknowledge that the effect of income on democracy varies across regions and over time (including the possibility that the effect disappears or reverses) and depends on the conditions prevailing in the international system and the domestic social structures. Students of the political economy of democratization stand today as ready as they stood almost forty years ago to share O'Donnell's conviction: the relationship between development and democracy is highly conditional. This study explores the similarities and differences between the causal mechanism that interested O'Donnell and those that capture the attention of contemporary scholarship and, replicating O'Donnell's gesture, takes a closer look at the social and partisan conditions of Argentina in the 1960s to discuss the plausibility of the current theoretical debate.

R. Michael Alvarez, Ines Levin, Julia Pomares and Marcelo Leiras (2013). Voting Made Safe and Easy: The Impact of evoting on Citizen Perceptions. Political Science Research and Methods, 1, pp 117137 doi:10.1017/psrm.2013.2

by Marcelo Leiras and Cippec Julia Pomares

V oting technologies frame the voting experience. Different ways of presenting information to vot... more V oting technologies frame the voting experience. Different ways of presenting information to voters, registering voter choices and counting ballots may change the voting experience and cause individuals to re-evaluate the legitimacy of the electoral process. Yet few field experiments have evaluated how voting technologies affect the voting experience. This article uses unique data from a recent e-voting field experiment in Salta, Argentina to study these questions. It employs propensity-score matching methods to measure the causal effect of replacing traditional voting technology with e-voting on the voting experience. The study's main finding is that while e-voters perceive the new technology as easier to use and more likely to register votes as intended-and support replacing traditional voting technologies with e-voting-the new technologies also raise some concerns about ballot secrecy.

Parties, Provinces and Electoral Coordination: a Study on the Determinants of Party and Party System Aggregation In Argentina, 1983-2005

Todos Los Caballos Del Rey: La Integración De Los Partidos Políticos Y El Gobierno Democrático De La Argentina, 1995-2003

La fortaleza de los partidos políti-cos no garantiza el carácter democrático de las decisiones d... more

Organización Partidaria Y Democracia: Tres Tesis De Los Estudios Comparativos Y Su Aplicación a Los Partidos En La Argentina

Revista SAAP, Jan 1, 2004

Latin America's Electoral Turn: Left, Right, and Wrong

CONSTELLATIONS-OXFORD-, Jan 1, 2007

Instituciones De Gobierno, Partidos Y Representación Política En Las Democracias De América Latina: Una Revisión De La Literatura Reciente

Contribuciones: publicación trimestral de la Konrad- …

Argentina: Problemas Macroeconómicos, Conflicto Social Y Debilitamiento De La Coalición De Gobierno

Rev. cienc. polít.(Santiago)

Relaciones Entre Estado Y Sociedad Civil En La Argentina: Un Marco De Análisis

Construyendo confianza. Hacia un nuevo vínculo entre …

La Incidencia De Las Organizaciones De La Sociedad Civil En Las Políticas Públicas

Acuña, Carlos y Vacchieri, Ariana (comp.)La …, Jan 1, 2007

Desde sus inicios, los consejos consultivos municipales (de aquí en más CCM) han funcionado como ... more Desde sus inicios, los consejos consultivos municipales (de aquí en más CCM) han funcionado como espacios de diálogo social para la articulación y discusión sobre las diferentes políticas. Asimismo, estos permitieron la participación en la ejecución y control de los planes sociales, como también en el diseño y formulación de políticas públicas, y es allí donde se pueden observar las distintas pujas y correlaciones de fuerzas a la hora de la incidencia. En el desarrollo de esta tesis, analizaremos el rol que juegan las distintas Organizaciones de la sociedad civil (de aquí en más OSC) dentro del marco de los consejos consultivos a la hora de incidir en las políticas públicas del municipio. Consideramos que el ámbito local, en este caso el municipio de Morón (provincia de Buenos Aires), es privilegiado para observar y evaluar estos procesos de construcción de los espacios multiactorales, de sus capacidades y potencialidades en términos de iniciativa y de gestión de políticas de nivel local. Como así también de creación de nuevas formas de articulación entre lo público y lo privado.

Debate sobre el poder judicial en Argentina.

by Marcelo Alegre and Marcelo Leiras

Este es un reportaje conjunto con Marcelo Leiras, Paula Litvachky, Alvaro Herrero y Gustavo Mauri... more

A call to arms: the conditional effect of economic performance on coups

by Marcelo Leiras, Antonella Bandiera, and Marcos Manuel Salgado

Economic performance signals government competence. Signs of incumbent incompetence inspire hopes... more Economic performance signals government competence. Signs of incumbent incompetence inspire hopes of replacement and encourage challenges both within and outside incumbent coalitions. Perceptions of incumbent weakness may lead to irregular replacement of governments when political competition is not institutionalized. Therefore, the incidence of economic performance on the frequency of coup attempts should be higher when institutions of political competition are inexistent or weak. The existence of political parties, elections and protections on political participation should dampen the effect of economic outcomes on forceful attempts to replace incumbents. This paper develops this theoretical insight and tests the validity of its observable implications on a large sample of country years. Instrumenting economic performance, we were able to dissipate some concerns about potential reverse causation. Results of our empirical exercise confirm the theoretical expectation