Term Length and the Effort of Politicians

We evaluate the effects of a fundamental lever of constitutional design: the duration of public office terms. We present a simple model grounded in interviews with legislators and highlight three forces shaping incentives to exert legislative effort. We exploit two natural experiments in the Argenti...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Review of economic studies 2011-10, Vol.78 (4), p.1237-1263
Main Authors: BÓ, ERNESTO DAL, ROSSI, MARTÍN A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Argentina
Economic incentives
Economic models
Institutionalism
Legislative work
Legislators
Legislatures
Natural experiments
Parliament
Point estimators
Political campaigns
Political economy
Political parties
Politicians
Rates of return
Reelection
Senators
Standard error
Studies
Term limitations
Upper houses
Yield
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Summary:We evaluate the effects of a fundamental lever of constitutional design: the duration of public office terms. We present a simple model grounded in interviews with legislators and highlight three forces shaping incentives to exert legislative effort. We exploit two natural experiments in the Argentine Congress (where term lengths were assigned randomly) to ascertain which forces are empirically dominant. Results for separate measures as well as an aggregate index of legislative effort show that longer terms increase effort. Shorter terms appear to discourage effort not due to campaign distractions but due to an investment payback logic: when effort yields returns over multiple periods, longer terms yield a higher chance of capturing those returns. A broader implication is that job stability may promote effort despite making individuals less accountable.
ISSN:0034-6527
1467-937X
DOI:10.1093/restud/rdr010