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Monica Pachon
Monica Pachon
Ph.D. Student
mpachon@ucsd.edu
Phone: (858) 534-7615
Fax: (858) 534-3939
9500 Gilman Dr. #0519
La Jolla, CA 92093-0519
Office #1426
Education
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, expected 2008 (political science)
M.Phil., St. Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 2002 (Latin American studies)
M.A., University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, 2000 (political science and public policy)
B.A., University of Los Andes, Bogota, Colombia, 1999 (political science)
Biography
Monica is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, San Diego in the joint IR/PS and Political Science Department program. Her research interests are primarily focused on issues related to executive-legislative relations in Latin American presidential systems; legislative procedure, broad issues of institutional change and design and public policy, and the role of legislative institutions in the policy-making process. Her primary areas of focus are the Andean Region and Brazil.
Current Projects
Dissertation
Cross-Avenue Politics in Latin America: Negotiating with Powerful Presidents
Monica's dissertation aims to understand why presidents and legislators use different law-making “avenues” to avoid gridlock and enact policy. Presidents in countries such as Brazil, Colombia, or Chile have strong legislative powers and various ways to implement preferred policy. While most of the literature dealing with executive-legislative relations in Latin America analyzes mainly statutory politics, her research investigates how the existence of multiple avenues to achieve policy goals—decrees, statutes and constitutional amendments—affects strategies and outcomes. The main argument of the three articles is that these avenues are interrelated. Therefore, in order to judge an official’s “success” or “failure” in introducing legislation it is necessary to examine the ultimate policy outcome, whether that outcome is implemented via decree, statute, or constitutional amendment. When a legislator’s success is conceptualized as the capacity to influence, delay or stop executive initiatives, instead of only the capacity to enact his/her own legislation, this approach generates a profoundly different and more accurate understanding of systems where the executive is the main agenda setter.
Click here for more information about Monica's dissertation.
Research Interests
Working Papers
"The 2003 and 2006 Elections in Colombia: What Where the Effects of the Electoral Reform?" Co-authored with Professor Matthew S. Shugart
Abstract
The Colombian electoral system is considered one of the most candidate-based systems in the world (Shugart and Carey 1995). After a large number of failed attempts, in 2003, the Colombian Congress passed a constitutional reform which changed the Colombian electoral system from a proportional, closed list system (with no limit on the number of lists) to a variation of open list system, which allows the parties to choose between closed and open list for each separate election. The objective of this paper is to assess the effects of the change of electoral system by looking at the changes in intraparty competition by looking at the 2003 election for assemblies. In particular, we are interested in looking at the changes in intra-party and inter-party competition at the assembly level looking at the number of candidates running under these two different systems, the composition of the assemblies, the characteristics of parties who chose open list over closed lists, and finally, the concentration of votes within each list.
"Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes in Colombia: The effects of the 1991 Constitution (2005)," Co-authored with Mauricio Cardenas and Roberto Junguito, IDB working paper
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to understand how changes in the political institutions established in the 1991 Constitution affected policy formulation and policy outcomes for the case of Colombia. According to our analysis, the central implication of the reform is that the president lost significant capacity as an agenda setter. In contrast, Congress, the Constitutional Court, and the board of the central bank have gained relative power. As a consequence, political transaction costs for the executive increased in several policy areas: macro-economic policy and fiscal policy. To illustrate the generalized decline in the president’s legislative success, we constructed an original database covering the period previous and after the reform, with a sample of four legislative years before the reform, and all bills introduced in the House of Representatives after 1992.
"Explaining the Performance of the Colombian Congress: Electoral and legislative Rules, and Interactions with the Executive, 1991-2000" (2002) M.Phil dissertation at St. Antony's College, University of Oxford, Short version presented at LASA.
The aim of this paper is to show how Congress was organized internally and to explore what explained the Committees and legislators’ behaviour in the period 1994-2001. Former research on the Colombian Congress has been mainly focused on the effect of electoral rules on the Congress’ performance. Those studies did not take into account the effects of internal rules and the power of the executive. This paper will prove that these variables are important for understanding what the current situation of Congress is.
Additionally, the objective of this research is to analyze how the institutional framework governing the Colombian Congress affects both the behaviour of legislators and the way parties are organized. Examinations of Colombian legislative performance have usually focused on the features of the electoral system and the weaknesses of party discipline. From the electoral rules, studies have concluded that although the Colombian President has important constitutional powers, it is impossible to overcome the deadlocks generated by a system that promotes intra-party and inter-party competition. However, the Colombian Congress’s performance shows a certain level of organization and even efficiency in passing bills and getting through the legislative agenda. How can we explain this paradox? My proposal is that by taking into account the electoral rules, the internal rules of Congress and the power of the executive branch in imposing its preferences both in procedural and substantive matters, one can solve the paradox of the Congress performance and policy outcomes.
The period analysed, 1994-2000, covers two presidential periods after the Constitutional reform of 1991, and will contemplate both behaviour towards policy outcomes and procedural matters that account for the three main variables – the electoral rules, the internal rules of Congress and the resulting power from the executive- that account for the committees’ and legislators’ behaviour in the Colombian Congress.
Publications of Note
"Congressional Proceedings and the Proposer's Advantage," Co-authored with Professor Eduardo Alemán, forthcoming in Política y Gobierno, Vol XV, núm. 1, primer semestre de 2008.
Abstract
In this paper we examine how congressional rules, committee appointments, and presidential prerogatives interact to affect decision-making inside Colombian and Chilean conference committees. We show that conferees are afforded important discretion to affect policymaking. Although conference committees lack negative agenda-setting power (i.e.,gatekeeping power), they enjoy significant positive power to shape legislative outcomes. This allows strategic conference committees to make policy gains even in the in the face of powerful presidents. The final stage of the lawmaking process reveals quite a lot about the consequences of delegation inside legislatures as well as the balance of power between both branches of government. Our analysis also shows how the selection of conferees gives chamber authorities the power to influence committee proposals and, more surprisingly in Colombia, the power to bias committee composition to favor a particular chamber.
"Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes in Colombia: The effects of the 1991 Constitution (2008)," Co-authored with Mauricio Cardenas and Roberto Junguito, in Policymaking In Latin America: How Politics Shape Policies.
About the book: What determines the capacity of countries to design, approve, and implement effective public policies? To address this issue, this book builds on the results of a comparative study of political institutions, policymaking processes, and policy outcomes in eight Latin American countries. The volume benefits from both micro detail on the intricacies of policymaking in individual countries and a broad cross-country interdisciplinary analysis of the process in the region.
The country studies demonstrate a deep knowledge of the specific historical dynamics and idiosyncratic structural factors at play in each case, while focusing on the effects of political institutions as viewed through a common analytical lens founded in game theory and institutional analysis. This book should become a staple on the syllabus of any class on Latin American politics or institutional politics and important background reading in many classes on development economics.
"How parties create electoral democracy," chapter 2, With Royce Carroll and Professor Gary Cox, in Legislative Studies Quarterly 2006
Abstract
Parties neither cease to exist nor cease to compete for office when the general election is over. Instead, a new round of competition begins, with legislators as voters and party leaders as candidates. The offices at stake are what we call “mega-seats.” We consider the selection of three different types of mega-seats—cabinet portfolios, seats on directing boards, and permanent committee chairs—in 57 democratic assemblies. If winning parties select the rules by which mega-seats are chosen and those rules affect which parties can attain mega-seats (one important payoff of “winning”), then parties and rules should coevolve in the long run. We find two main patterns relating to legislative party systems and a country’s length of experience with democratic governance
A previous version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago, Illinois, September 2-5, 2004. It has been published in Legislative Studies Quarterly.
"Challenges in Ensuring Democratic Survival," an Overview (2006) From Fortalezas de Colombia (Fernando Cepeda, Editor)
This book chapter is an attempt to unite all the various dimensions which compose the democratic system to offer an overview of the performance and challenges that exist for Colombian democratic institutions today.
"Congress and Political Parties in Colombia (2004, 2006)" From Fortalezas de Colombia (Fernando Cepeda, Editor)
This essay purports to link the study of Colombian parties in Congress to an agenda of comparative politics, so as to compare the Colombian case with those of other countries, and with its own path, from a historical perspective. There are several reasons why this is beneficial for the Colombian case. First, the observation of parties in an isolated manner has led to an extremely negative and chaotic picture, in which there do not exist regularities, patterns that may be identified and compared in order to assess “how badly or how well” we are doing. Colombia is not the only system in the world with clientelism, corruption or fragile party organizations. Observing the experiences of other countries with similar features enables us to elaborate hypothesis that may be helpful to understand our own political process. Second, because –at is has been pointed out more recently-, assessments of the Colombian case that lack historical perspective have nourished myths which are not yet the object of investigation nor of empirical validation.
"Political Institutions and Policy Outcomes in Colombia: The effects of the 1991 Constitution (2005)," Co-authored with Mauricio Cardenas and Roberto Junguito, in Coyuntura Económica, First Semester 2006, Vol. XVI, No. 1, pp. 61- 114
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to understand how changes in the political institutions established in the 1991 Constitution affected policy formulation and policy outcomes for the case of Colombia. According to our analysis, the central implication of the reform is that the president lost significant capacity as an agenda setter. In contrast, Congress, the Constitutional Court, and the board of the central bank have gained relative power. As a consequence, political transaction costs for the executive increased in several policy areas: macro-economic policy and fiscal policy. To illustrate the generalized decline in the president’s legislative success, we constructed an original database covering the period previous and after the reform, with a sample of four legislative years before the reform, and all bills introduced in the House of Representatives after 1992.
