Parliament representation in Latin America. The permanent commissions and the parties in Congress

• Main Author: Luisa BÉJAR
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca 2009-04-01
• Series: América Latina Hoy
• Subjects: congreso; comisiones; américa latina; proceso legislativo; partidos políticos
• Online Access: https://revistas.usal.es/index.php/1130-2887/article/view/1369

The main argument of this paper is that the heterogeneity of the institutional framework that prevails in Latin America’s electoral field (Carroll y Shugart, 2005), also reproduces itself in the parliamentary one. This is proved by the morphologic profile of each Congress’ commission system and the place that the law assigns to the system. While some legislative frameworks clearly intend to delegate to parties the decisions entrusted to this bodies; in other cases, this takes place in a less important way. In the cases formally related with a party logic, on the other hand, diverse delegation schemes are encouraged. In this article we analyze the institutional framework of the commission systems of the low chamber in: Argentina; Bolivia; Brazil; Colombia; Chile; Mexico; Paraguay; Dominican Republic and Uruguay. In this sense, this work examines the importance given to their job and some aspects of its morphology that affect the structure of incentives that narrows the development of the legislative process. We also analyze the procedures used by each Congress to solve its problems of collective action. Lastly, some ideas for the elaboration of a future taxonomy on the relationship between parties and permanent commissions in the region are presented.