Assessing Political Elites’ Renewal in Latin America Through Legislative Amateurism

GABRIEL LEVITA

Kassel

Workshop; Elites and Class ? Interrogating the Rich and Powerful in Latin America and Beyond; 2023

University of Kassel

Legislative experience, one of the various indicators of both congressional institutionalization and political elites’ renewal, has been mostly measured by either turnover or reelection. However, in regions such as Latin America, with more volatile and less institutionalized party systems, where most careers are not stable and ambitions are not mostly static, turnover and reelection may not be accurate measures of legislative experience. This paper aims at filling this gap by assessing parliamentary experience in Latin America by means of a more accurate indicator: legislative amateurism. Using a novel dataset comprising eighteen national single or lower chamber legislatures over almost three decades, we find that legislative amateurism is a consequence of party system institutionalization, electoral volatility, term limits, and newly implemented gender quotas. Overall, our findings suggest that weak political parties and certain electoral rules may become fertile ground for amateur legislators´ landing in Congress.