Institutional Engineering and the Nature of Representation:

Mapping the Effects of Electoral Reform in Colombia

One of the most perplexing issues of representation (defined here as responsiveness) is that
legislators are elected by a geographi-cally limited sector ofthe population to represent its
interests, and yet their job is to govern the nation as a whole. Pitkin argues that the alter-
natives are not mutually exclusive; a representative should be responsive to both local and
national concerns (1967, 215-218). The polar extremes of this continuum are elected
representatives who pursue exclusively pro? grammatic, universal policies and those who
pursue exclusively parochial, particularistic policies. The balance between programmatic and
parochial policies is determined by a legislator's "particular constituency" (Pitkin 1967, 218).
One might expect legislators chosen in small, geographic sub-units to favor the parochial or
local end ofthe spectrum. Legislators chosen from a larger geographic unit, including those
chosen in at-large nation-wide districts, might place greater emphasis on programmatic,
national concerns. We examine one country's efforts to use electoral reform to change the
balance struck by legislators between parochial and programmatic priorities. Personalistic or
clientelistic ties between legislators and their constituents have long characterized Colombian
democracy. The adoption in 1991 of a new constitution intended to alter traditional political
practices provides us a natural quasi-experiment with which to test hypotheses about the rela?
tionship between institutional design and the nature of representation.

Reformers reasoned that if legislators had wider-ranging geographic bases of support, they
would focus less on pa-rochial, clientelistic matters. With data from both before and after the
adoption of major institutional changes, we test whether the institutional changes they
adopted led to the more dispersed patterns of support they sought and whether geographic
patterns of support are related to the policies that a representative pursues once in congress.
On December 9, 1990, Colombians elected from a nationwide district a seventy-member
Asamblea Natio? nal Constituyente (National Constituent Assembly) to re-write the Colombian
constitution. This election marked the culmination of more than a decade of attempts by
Colombian presidents to bring about political reform. The electoral system encouraged
excessively particularis-tic behavior by legislators making them responsive to narrow
clientelistic, largely rural networks (Archer and Shugart 1997). Legislators typically neglected
national is? sues, and corrupt practices abounded. Furthermore, members of Congress were
not inclined to alter a politi? cal system under which they had experienced electoral success.1
Presidents were more attuned to programmatic concerns because of their nationwide
constituency, but were often unable to push their own policy agenda (in-cluding reform
attempts) through Congress. Attempts to bypass Congress were frequently foiled by the
Supreme Court, and consequently, the majority of Colombians, especially those living in urban
areas, felt excluded from the country's political system. Many expressed their re-sulting
frustrations and dissatisfaction through protest and violence (Archer and Shugart 1997;
Nielson and Shugart 1999). Protest marches and demonstrations about insufficient services
and infrastructure in towns and cities multiplied, general crime levels rose, and "tra-ditional"
guerrilla activity in rural areas increased. By 1990, pressure for reform was so great that when
voters in a referendum supported the creation of a constituent assembly, the Supreme Court
finally allowed this extra-constitutional process. According to Botero (1998), reformers hoped
(1) to increase the political participation of regional, ethnic, and political minorities, (2) to rid
the political system of clientelism and the associated corruption, and (3) to alter the nature of
representation by fashioning an upper chamber for national concerns and a lower house focus-
ing on regional and local matters, albeit after a reappor-tioning of the districts to correct for
the overrepresentation of rural areas. Despite hopes for sweeping reform, the most significant
changes were those made to the Sen? ate (Archer and Shugart 1997; Nielson and Shugart
1999; Gaceta Constitucional 1991). Under the previous constitution, all legislators in the
bicameral Colombian Congress were elected under a closed-list system from circunscripciones
territoriales, re-gional districts congruent with the country's administra-tive departments and
akin to American states. Party lead-ers had no control over the party label; therefore, several
closed lists with the same party label competed in a de? partment. Voters could vote for one
member of the Chamber of Representatives and one member ofthe Sen? ate, with both votes
pooled only to the level of the subparty list on which their preferred candidate appeared.
Because multiple lists from the same party competed in each district, intraparty competition
was rife. Given that candidates had to distinguish themselves from members of their own
party, the electoral system enhanced the im-portance of candidates' personal reputations and
encour-aged personalistic politics (Carey and Shugart 1995).

Reformers left the electoral system for the Chamber of Representatives largely unchanged, but
transformed the Senate into a 100-member body elected from a single nationwide district
(previous districts ranged in district magnitude from two to fifteen). The Constituent Assembly
had been elected from a single nationwide dis? trict, and many of its members hoped to
replicate their interest in programmatic, national concerns by creating a legislative chamber
elected in the same manner. It was hoped that senators would be forced to refrain from re-
liance on traditional clientelistic machinery, choosing instead to build a national reputation
based on their programmatic policy priorities. Furthermore, the politi? cal arena would be
opened to nontraditional candidates who, lacking a strong regional support base, would be
able to pursue a "dispersed strategy" of winning smaller numbers of votes across all the
country's departments that would, when totaled, be sufficient to ensure elec? tion. The new-
look Senate was first elected in 1991 with subsequent elections taking place in 1994 and 1998.
These elections provide us with three sets of results to examine the extent of the reform's
impact on the nature of representation in Colombia.

Hypotheses

We pursue two basic research questions. Firstly, is a dis? persed geographic pattern of support
common among the candidates getting elected in the post-reform era? And secondly, do
senators represent geographically dispersed supporters by initiating programmatic, nationally
focused bills? We capture geographic patterns of support with the Hirschman-Herfindahl Index
(HHI) (Hirschman 1945; Herfindahl 1950). For our purposes, the proportion of his or her vote
that a senator wins in each department is squared, and these figures are then added together.
This sum can vary from .0303, when votes received are distrib-uted evenly across all thirty-
three departments, to L00, when votes are received in a single department. This mea? sure
takes into account the relative size and distribution of a department's contribution to a
senator's base of sup? port. We reason that the relative concentration of votes is a function of
the length of time candidates and voters have had to adjust to the new incentive structure and
of the experience that the legislator and his or her party had under the old incentive structure.
As experience with the new rules accumulates, candidates who campaign on broad
programmatic platforms with appeal across the en-tire country are more likely to succeed.
Reformers rea-soned that voters would use their vote for the Chamber of Representatives to
pursue particularistic concerns, and over time, their Senate vote would be used to pursue pro?
grammatic issues. Unlike the pre-reform era, when all of a senator's votes came from a single
department, it is now possible to win election with small numbers of votes in departments
across the entire country. Thus, a would-be senator known as "the environmental candidate,"
"the health-care candidate," or "the evangelical candidate" may generate nationwide support
with citizens for whom these issues resonate. Under the previous system, it was unlikely that
there would be sufficient voters motivated by such an appeal in a single department for it to
form the basis of a victorious campaign. Looking at the consequences of ma-jor electoral
reform in Japan, Reed and Thies state, "[t]here is no reason to assume that the first election
un? der a new system represents the final equilibrium. The best evidence for the strength of
various incentives and the final equilibrium point is not how things are at any given point in
time, but how things change over time. Equilibrium should be thought of and analyzed as a dy-
namic concept" (2001, 387). Therefore, we hypothesize that each successive election?1991,
1994, and 1998? should be characterized by increasingly dispersed patterns of support as the
impact of the new rules are reflected in campaigning and voters and candidates abandon en-
grained patterns of clientelistic, geographically concen-trated relations.

Previous electoral success under the old rules is likely to discourage a candidate from pursuing
a new campaign strategy. For one reason, a geographically concentrated support base from
the previous electoral era would be difficult and expensive to abandon. Such candidates might
be forced to look across the entire country for votes, but they may try to do so without
forfeiting their old strongholds. Thus, we test whether a previous victory in a subnational
district, promotes a more concentrated pattern of support.

Candidates of parties that prospered under the old rules may also find it difficult to adopt a
different elec? toral strategy. The party itself may have geographically defined networks or
machines for delivering votes and campaign norms that make a concentrated pattern of
support more likely. The Conservatives and Liberals de-signed the previous system with its
dependence on clientelistic networks and particularistic rewards and dominated electoral
politics during the democratic era. Thus, senators from these parties would be inclined to
maintain their parochial orientation longer than those from parties who had not fared well or
perhaps even ex-isted, under the old rules. Conversely, nontraditional candidates are, in many
instances, those unable to gain election under the old system. The new system was de-signed
partly with the aim of making Senate seats more accessible to such candidates. Thus, we also
note the par-tisan identification of each legislator.

Time and previous experience may interact. Over time, the average senator may cultivate a
more dispersed constituency, but candidates with personal or party suc-cess under the
previous constitution would be least likely to adopt a geographically dispersed campaign
strategy. In other words, we might expect that hardheaded "dino-saurs" who predate the
current rules of the game (or who represent parties that did so with success) would be the
slowest to recognize new exigencies. Newcomers and the traditionally underprivileged might
be quicker to jump at new opportunities presented by a reformed institu-tional environment.

This reasoning leads to the following formal hy-potheses:

Hl: Candidates will seek votes more widely the longer the new rules are in place.

H2: Candidates with a previous victory in a subna? tional district will have a more concentrated
pat? tern of support.

H3: Candidates from traditionally strong parties will have a more concentrated pattern of
support.

H4: Candidates with a previous victory in a subna? tional district or from a traditionally strong
party will be the slowest to build a more dispersed pat? tern of support.

Having delineated possible explanations for the rela-tive dispersion of patterns of support, let
us outline expectations of how these patterns impact legislator be? havior. When a legislator's
constituents are geographically concentrated, the probability that the legislator will ini-tiate
parochially targeted bills increases.2 Geographically concentrated constituents are easy to
identify and serve with bills that, for example, build schools, pave roads, and construct
sporting facilities. A more dispersed group of supporters cannot be represented effectively by
the same types of bills. Constituents in one part of the country will not benefit from, or even
hear about, village roads paved or elementary schools built in other parts of the country.
Instead, legislators must "specialize" in programmatic themes where the goods produced by
the legislation are distributed widely (or lack a geographic target).3

As with campaign strategies, legislative "hill style" may not change overnight in a new electoral
context. In-dividuals and parties that fared well under the previous set of rules may remain
inclined to propose bills that are particularistic and geographically targeted. Thus, legisla? tors
who were elected previously in a department-level district, or who come from the traditionally
strong Con? servative and Liberal parties, are likely to retain their par? ticularistic propensities.

Regarding bill initiation patterns, our expectations are as follows:

H5: Parochially targeted bills will tend to be initiated by legislators with geographically
concentrated support.

H6: Parochially targeted bills will tend to be initiated by legislators with a previous victory in a
subna-tional district.

H7: Parochially targeted bills will tend to be initiated by legislators from traditionally strong
parties.

Patterns of Support for Senators in Post-Reform Colombia

In the post-reform Senate, the sum of squared propor-tions, or Hirschman-Herfindahl Index

(HHI), for the 300 individual senators varied from a concentrated high of almost .957 to a more
dispersed low of less than .060.4 The kinds of vote patterns that lead to scores like these, and
to the score most closely approximating the average for all senators, are depicted in Figure 1.
Elec? toral success can be achieved in a number of ways, with the new institutional
arrangements allowing for mul? tiple equilibria.5 Candidates could pursue a variety of
strategies between the concentrated and the dispersed extremes to win election.

Jaime Calderon Dussan had the most dispersed pat? tern of support of any senator elected in
the post-reform era. He had never occupied a seat in the national legisla-ture prior to 1994
when he won as a member of a new movement, Educacion, Trabajo y Cambio Social (Educa?
tion, Work, and Social Change). He was able to generate widespread support by focusing on
the issue of education, and the major teachers' union in the country strongly supported his
candidacy. On the other hand, Tiberio Villareal Ramos, whose vote pattern in 1991 most
closely approximates the overall average, was a member of the Liberal party elected to the
Chamber of Representatives in 1982, 1986, and 1990. Finally, Jorge A. Hernandez Restrepo
received the most concentrated pattern of sup? port of any legislator in the post-reform era
under the la? bel of Nueva Fuerza Democrdtica (New Democratic Force), a new movement
with conservative leanings cre-ated immediately prior to the 1994 elections.6

The determinants of vote concentration in the post-reform Senate are presented in Table l.7
All our hypoth-esized causes are statistically discernible (model 1). Prior success of a senator or
his or her party under rules that promoted parochialism is positively associated with vote
concentration. Prior success of an individual legislator is measured as a dummy variable if the
senator had been elected to the Chamber of Representatives or pre-reform Senate from a
statewide district. Prior success for his or her party is a dummy variable for membership in the
Liberal or Conservative parties. Contrary to the expecta-tion of reformers, and our hypotheses,
increased experi-ence with the new rules is also associated with a more concentrated pattern
of support (experience with the new rules is merely a count variable for the number of
elections since reform). We had hypothesized that candi? dates and voters would adapt to the
new rules over time, with patterns of support becoming ever more dispersed. Instead, vote
patterns have become more concentrated with time. Given this finding, one might expect that
the interaction term for experience and party identification would indicate that candidates
from traditional parties would revert more quickly to parochial ways (model 2). This
expectation is also refuted. The negative sign on the interaction term indicates that while
patterns of support for candidates from traditional parties are becoming more concentrated
over time, they are doing so more slowly than those for candidates from new and tradition?
ally small parties.

To make these findings more comprehensible, we present predicted values of vote

concentration based on simulations where one factor of interest is allowed to vary while all
other independent variables are held con-stant. This simulation-based approach conveys
numeri-cally precise estimates of the quantity of greatest substan-tive interest, vote
concentration, and a reasonable measure of uncertainty (a 90 percent confidence inter-val)
about those estimates (King, Tomz, and Wittenberg 2000).8 Assuming that voters and
candidates had only one experience with the new incentive structure, and the candidate in
question has had a previous legislative vic-tory in a subnational district, membership in a tradi?
tional party leads to a vote concentration prediction of .611.9 On the other hand, with the
same assumptions holding, we would expect a candidate from a nontradi-tional party to have
a score of only .364.10 Clearly, Liberal and Conservative senators are likely to have much more
concentrated patterns of support. This is the substan-tively most powerful of our hypothesized
causes: The parties that designed the old rules and prospered under them have a predicted
vote-concentration score approxi-mately 1.68 times the size of their counterparts in the new
electoral context.

Another statistically significant determinant of vote concentration is geographically

concentrated constituen-cies established through a previous win in a department-level district.
If we hold experience with the new rules constant at one previous election, and fix party
identifi-cation at "member of a traditional party," the predicted vote concentration for
someone without a previous sub-national victory is .522,11 whereas a senator with such a
previous victory is likely to have a pattern of support concentrated at a level of .611.12 While
not as dramatic as the impact of party membership, previous success in a subnational district
diminishes the impact that the new electoral incentives have on candidates. Once a constitu-
ency is constructed, the pattern of support endures de-spite changing rules.

As already noted, the least expected finding was the effect of accumulating experience with
the new rules. We hypothesized, and Colombian reformers assumed, that candidates and
voters would adjust to the new rules over time. They did, but not in the expected direction.
Re? formers reasoned that candidates would seek votes more widely as they became familiar
with the opportunities af-forded them by the new nationwide district. However, while the
reforms adopted made this possible, they did not make it mandatory. After an initial dispersion
of votes in 1991, when the mean vote concentration score (HHI) was .423, patterns of support
had reconcentrated to .574 by 1994. Prior to reform, senators were elected from departments
with between two to fifteen seats ap-portioned to each according to population. In 1986, in
the election ofthe last full congress before reform, the av? erage winning senator received
33,723 votes. The win-ning senator with the fewest votes, from sparsely popu-lated Choco,
received 16,584 votes. In 1991, the first election after the adoption of a nationwide district, the
average winning senator received 35,402 votes, and the winning senator with the fewest votes
received 21,861. Thus, the sheer number of votes required to win did not change dramatically,
and there was no formal requirement that votes come from more than one department.
Simulations for candidates from traditional parties with a previous victory in a subnational
district show vote concentration scores of .585 in 1991, .611 in 1994, and .636 in 1998.13
Candidates reverted back to a more geo? graphically focused pattern of support as the initial
zeal for the expected impact of reforms faded.

In model 2 (see Table 1), as mentioned above, we in-teracted experience with the new rules
and party mem-bership to see whether members of traditional parties were reverting back to
geographically concentrated pat? terns more quickly. We found that while candidates from
both types of parties had increasingly reconcentrated support over time, members of
nontraditional parties were doing so most rapidly (see Table 2). Over time, the gap between
members of nontraditional and traditional parties narrowed. In the first post-reform election,
the predicted vote for candidates of the traditional parties was more than twice as
concentrated as the vote for can? didates from nontraditional parties. However, by 1998, the
gap had shrunk to 1.38 times more concentrated. Candidates from traditional parties maintain
more con? centrated patterns of support than do candidates from nontraditional parties,14
but members from nontradi? tional parties increasingly recognized that concentrated vote
patterns were still a recipe for electoral success.

From these results, we can conclude that the reforms adopted by Colombians were not
sufficient to achieve the results they desired. They made clear that their intent was to create a
chamber where elected representatives would be more responsive to national issues and
would campaign widely on programmatic themes to achieve a broad base of support. The
adoption of a single, nation? wide district made this possible, and in the immediate post-
reform context, the more dispersed patterns of sup? port indicate that candidates and voters
took reformers' intent into account. However, it quickly became clear that although the
reforms made dispersed patterns of support possible, they did not make them necessary.

Senator Victor Renan Barco Lopez has a pattern of voter support that generally reflects the
overall trend iden-tified through our simulations (see Figure 2).15 Barco is a member ofthe
Liberal Party and has secured a seat in the Senate in every race since 1974.16 Prior to the
constitu? tional reforms, Barco was elected from the department of Caldas. In 1994, for
example, he received more than 1,000 votes in only one state other than Caldas.

We asked him about the impact of the reforms, es-pecially the creation of a single, nationwide
district for the Senate, his sense of what "representation" meant, and his methods of
campaigning.17 In his opinion, not much had changed since the creation of a nationwide
district (no cambio nada) because a senate candidate without a regional base was still unlikely
to be successful {no sale cotno senador). Regarding representation, he ar-gued that senators
must combine regional and local concerns with a focus on larger national issues. Barco claimed
that those who do not are unlikely to be re-elected. He personally carries out this two-pronged
strategy by trying to generate resources for Caldas while establishing a national reputation as
an expert on tax re? form, especially fiscal decentralization. As a result, he is able to maintain
his traditional base in Caldas while picking up votes outside the department. However, his
comments about campaigning and the spatial distribu-tion of his support make it clear that
"region" still domi-nates his thinking. Barco only campaigns for reelection in Caldas (ufuera de
Caldas no hago nada"), visiting sev-eral communities where a "friend" {amigo mio) has re-
served a plaza or theater for his campaign stop. Whoever introduces him is provided with a list
of the projects he has initiated?such as public housing, schools, and hos-pitals?and is sure to
refer to him as the "Father of the Municipality" (elpadre del municipio).

While this trend is not what reformers would have preferred, it should be noted that even a
vote concentra? tion score of .637 (the predicted score for the elections of 1998 for members
of a traditional party with a previous victory in a subnational district) is a far cry from the score
of 1.0 that was mandated under the old rules. What remains to be determined is whether
more dispersed pat? terns of support are associated with a different form of behavior once in
office.

Parochial versus Programmatic Representation

In order to test our hypotheses regarding institutional in-centives to carry out specific forms of
representation, we collected data on patterns of bill initiation in the pre-and post-reform
Colombian Senate. Our research design approximates a natural experiment: we have data
from the last complete congress before reform (1986-1990) and the first complete congress
after reform (1994-1998). Examining the same legislative chamber in the same country only a
few years apart holds constant many factors that might otherwise confound our analysis. Us?
ing the coding scheme developed by Taylor-Robinson and Diaz (1999), we designated each bill
as having either a national, regional, sectoral, local, or individual (includ-ing a single legal
entity) target.18 In the United States, leg? islators routinely introduce bills narrowly focused on
their own congressional district. Whether the bill actually becomes law is often irrelevant, for a
major function of legislative initiation is simply to show constituents that the elected
representative has their preferences in mind. "Credit claiming" can take many forms?from
committee assignments to votes on the floor to bill initiation (Mayhew 1974; Fenno 1978;
Fiorina 1989; Arnold 1990; Jacobson 1997). In Brazil, Ames points out that "deputies introduce
legislation with no intention of shepherding their bills through to final passage. Deputies
submit bills, the Chamber prints them, and the printed versions (avulsos) are sent to
constituents as proof of'service'" (2001, 142).19 Bills that are not national in focus are likely to
provide legislative pork for the "folks back home," while bills with national focus are unlikely to
tar-get effectively specific electoral constituencies.

Table 3 provides an overview of bill initiation trends in the pre-reform and the post-reform
congress. As we would predict, and as reformers hoped, the number of bills targeted at the
national level increased dramatically after reform. The number of national bills increased by
more than 90 percent, while the number of bills in all other categories combined increased by
less than 1 per? cent (sectoral bills were initiated more frequently and re-gionally targeted bills
less frequently). Given this in? creased effort towards national agenda items, all other
categories of legislation consumed proportionally less of the Senate's time. It would seem that
reformers were at least partially successfiil. While many legislators initiated more than one bill
aimed at each target, the number of unique initiators in each category suggests that particular
kinds of legislation were not the private reserve of just a small handfiil of legislators.

Table 4 shows the relationship between a bilPs target and the electoral characteristics of its
author.21 In mod-els 1 and 2 we look at the post-reform congress alone when senatorial
candidates were allowed to seek votes from throughout the country. Vote concentration
scores ranged from .06 to .96 (see the data appendix for more details). In models 3 and 4 we
combine the pre-reform and post-reform congress bill initiation data. Senators in the pre-
reform congress were elected in department-wide districts?so, by law they had a vote
concentration score of 1.0. In some sense, the latter is a more difficult test of our theory
because we will have underestimated the likelihood of any national, programmatic behavior in
the pre-reform era. Using ordered logit, we analyzed the probability each type of bill will be
initiated by a senator with a particular electoral history. We also col-lapsed the data to
calculate, using logit, the relationship between nationally targeted bills (as opposed to all other
types) and the initiator's electoral characteristics. In the ordered logit model, presented below,
bills are arrayed on a scale of increasing "parochialism" from national to sectoral to regional to
local to individual. In the logit model, individual, local, regional, and sectoral bills are all coded
as having a higher potential to serve particu-laristic purposes.

Membership in a traditional or a nontraditional party was not significant in any of our models.
As we dis-covered above, party membership has a significant im-pact on the geographic
concentration of support. But once we account for that geographic pattern, senators from
different types of parties are indistinguishable from one another in how they carry out
representation. Vote concentration patterns (measured with the Hirschman- Herfindahl Index)
and previous legislative victory in a subnational district (a dummy variable for previous vic?
tory in a statewide district for the Chamber of Repre? sentatives or the pre-reform Senate) has
the expected ef? fect. Geographically targeted bills are more likely to be initiated by
legislators, with a concentrated reelection constituency. Previous representation of such a
constitu-ency remains important even after we account for a senator's current pattern of
votes. We use simulations (based on models 3 and 4) to help interpret our substan-tive
findings.

The probability that a bill will be particularistic is determined by the vote pattern and previous
electoral base of the initiator. The rows in Table 5 (based on model 3 from Table 4), indicate
that the probability of a bill be-ing particularistic or pork-barrel increases with the vote
concentration of the initiator. The columns show the ex? tent to which the predicted
probability of initiating a project whose benefits can be targeted to a particular constituency
increases when a senator has a previous leg? islative victory in a subnational district. In terms
of vote concentration, the biggest substantive gap is between those senators with highly
dispersed patterns of support and all others. The predicted probability that a senator's bill
proposal will have pork-barrel potential goes up .085 from the lowest to the average observed
vote concentra? tion pattern, and .119 from the lowest to the highest. The impact of having
served previously a geographically lim? ited constituency is consistent across all vote
concentra-tions. Senators with a previous connection to a depart-ment-level district have a
nearly .10 greater chance of initiating a bill with pork-barrel propensities. Senators with a
previous victory in a subnational district and at least average vote concentration are more
likely to ini-tiate a pork-barrel bill than to introduce a project fo-cused on broad, national
issues.

Model 4 in Table 4 shows the results of an ordered logit analysis where sectoral, regional,
local, and indi? vidual bills are not collapsed into a single category. These coefficients and their
standard errors are used to run simulations predicting the probability of initiating each of the
five types of bills. The predicted probabilities fol-lowed our expectations in every category. The
probability of initiating a nationally targeted bill decreased with vote concentration and a
previous victory in subnational dis? trict, and the inverse was true for every other type of bill.
In Table 6 we report the predicted probability of initiat? ing national and local bills?the two
archetypes of pro? grammatic versus parochial representation.23 Again, it is senators with the
most dispersed patterns of electoral support who stand out.24 Nationally targeted bills are al-
ways the single most frequent type of bill predicted, but their likelihood varies significantly
across previous and current patterns of support. If geographically dispersed voters elect
senators who have no historical connection to a single department, the probability that those
sena? tors will initiate a nationally targeted bill any time they introduce a piece of legislation
is .665. This is .231 points greater than the probability for a senator with a historical
geographic constituency and a continued concentrated pattern of support. The prospects of
initiating a locally targeted piece of legislation follow an inverse pattern, changing by nearly .1
from the lowest to highest pre? dicted probability.
The detailed legislative records of two selected sena? tors are presented to illustrate how
representation varies based on geographic patterns of support. We chose these illustrative
examples based on variation in our indepen-dent variables?geographic patterns of support and
his? torical relationship to a single department. While no in? dividual legislator represents
exactly the predicted values presented in Tables 5 and 6, the following examples come close.

Senator Juan Martin Caicedo Ferrer, a member ofthe traditionally strong Liberal party, was
elected in 1994 with a relatively dispersed vote pattern (HHI = .3571, see Fig-ure 3). He had not
been elected to Congress previously, but had served as mayor of Bogota from 1990 through
1991. Prior to that he had a distinguished career in the business sector both in Cali and
nationally, including a stint as president of National Federation of Merchants (Federacion
Nacional de Comerciantes?FENALCO) from 1978 through 1987 (Candidatos Visibles 2000).
During the 1994-1998 term, he initiated twenty-two bills, fifteen (nearly 70 percent) of which
were national in focus. These bills dealt with several diverse issues, including efforts to
increase penalties for sexual offenses, to reform the cus-toms collection agency, to stamp out
administrative cor-ruption, and to regularize retirement and disability pen-sions. All of the bills
that were not national in focus were designed to reform the governance of Santafe de Bogota?
the federal district. We interviewed Caicedo Ferrer's legislative assistant, Francisco Suarez,
about the senator's understanding of representation, campaign strategy, base of support, and
bill initiation pattern.25 Suarez said that the senator relied on the association of his name with
popular stands on prominent issues to gener-ate support (in Colombia this is somewhat
ambiguously referred to as a voto de opinion). To campaign nationally, he uses the mass media
to effectively spread news of his accomplishments in Congress.26 Suarez complained that it
was difficult to break the old department-based patterns of support, maintained by
longstanding clientelistic net-works, and to sustain Caicedo's methods of winning re-election.

Parmenio Cuellar Bastidas had been elected to the Chamber of Representatives in 1990
representing a coali-tion of parties, but the Congress was dissolved by the Na? tional
Constituent Assembly shortly thereafter. He won election to the Senate in 1991 as a Liberal
and reelection in 1994 as a member of the Movimiento Nueva Colombia (New Colombia
Movement). During the 1994-1998 term, he initiated a dozen bills, and nearly 60 percent of
them had particularistic qualities. These bills included homage to a notable local poet, the
celebration of the 65th anni-versary of the rebuilding of a small town, recognition of 100 years
of labor by the Capuchin Brothers (a religious order) in three particular departments, and the
creation of a postage stamp honoring a regional university. The bill paying homage to the poet
included provisions for pur-chasing his birthplace, increasing the budget of the regional
university, sculpting a bust in his honor, painting his portrait, and issuing a postage stamp
bearing his like-ness (the proceeds from which would accrue to the de? partment
government). The bill celebrating the rebuild-ing of Cumbral included provisions to pave
several local roads and to build three schools in the area. All of these activities were to take
place in Narino where the senator earned nearly 88 percent of his vote (see Figure 3). Cuellar
narrowly lost his bid for reelection to the Senate in 1998, but he used this legislative record to
help propel himself to the governorship of Narino in October 2000.

Our models and interviews indicate that Colombian legislators are fully aware of their patterns
of electoral support and that they tailor their behavior to reflect the relative geographic
concentration of their constituents. The adoption of a single, nationwide district for the
Senate's 100 seats means that the "electoral connection" between voters and senators can
vary spatially from sena? tor to senator (Mayhew 1974). Political reformers were correct in
assuming that highly concentrated vote pat? terns are inversely related to interest in national
issues. One of the reformers' primary goals was to fashion the Senate into a legislative
chamber that would tackle some of the very tough issues currently confronting Colombia. It is
now possible for candidates to campaign widely for support, and when elected, those same
candidates are in-deed more national in their orientation. However, citi? zens' expectations
that all senators would change their behavior may have been unrealistic. In particular, the as-
sumption that all senators would cultivate a national constituency was clearly mistaken. Thus,
many deem the reforms a failure.

Getting the Engineering Right

While Colombian reformers did not entirely achieve their goal of persuading candidates to
think in terms of a nationwide constituency, some dispersion of votes has taken place. Where
it has, it contributes to more pro? grammatic legislative behavior. Candidates have discov-ered
that a variety of strategies?mixing parochial and programmatic concerns?are available to them
as suc-cessful means of getting elected. Despite a reconcentra-tion of constituent bases in
successive post-reform elec? tions, the average senator still captures support more widely
than prior to reform. Some senators have clearly recognized the potential for a career based
on issues of national importance.

A major hindrance to achieving a more program? matic form of representation in Colombia is

the contin-ued use of personal lists. Members from the same party compete against one
another in general elections, and party leaders do not restrict the use of the party label
through any formal nomination procedure.27 As a result, candidates, including incumbents,
must build a personal reputation to distinguish themselves from co-partisans. This is a major
incentive for candidates to focus on pork-barrel rewards rather than on what their party has
done while in office. Drafters of the new constitution recog? nized the role of a more dispersed
base of support in en-couraging legislators to think less parochially, but did not eliminate other
personal vote seeking incentives?most notably intraparty competition in general elections. A
more dispersed constituency encourages the introduc-tion of nationally targeted legislation,
even while intra? party competition persists. More pervasive attention to programmatic
concerns is unlikely as long as concen? trated constituencies are still possible and intraparty
competition is institutionalized.

Several countries (Colombia, Israel, Moldova, Peru, the Philippines, Slovakia, and Uruguay) use
nationwide, at-large districts to elect entire legislative chambers. Sev? eral other countries
have a nationwide, at-large compo-nent to their mixed-member systems (where voters have a
direct role in choosing a legislator to represent their local-ity but some element ofthe
proportional representation is maintained for the chamber as whole). Our analysis of Colombia
shows that when the district magnitude is high, previous electoral success (directly by
candidate or indi-rectly by party) in geographically bounded districts en-courages a
concentrated pattern of support. Comparative work is necessary to discern the impact of a
lower district magnitude (and hence a greater proportion of votes cast for winning
candidates), as well as institutional configura-tions during the pre-reform era, and district
variations for the second chamber (where there is one). Nationwide, at-large districts may
create incentives for programmatic, nationally focused behavior by legislators where they are
more clearly separated from other races with subnational districts, or where there are a
sufficiently small number of seats elected in the nationwide race.

Striking a balance between programmatic and paro-chial forms of representation is not an

easy task. Pol-iticians interested in national, programmatic concerns, including presidents,
often find their efforts stymied. This has certainly been the case in Colombia.28 Extra-
constitutional means were once used to carry out re? forms, but the reformers failed to
achieve all the desired changes in legislator behavior. The cynicism generated by their failure
makes additional changes even more dif-ficult. Institutional change is "sticky" or episodic. Be?
cause institutions by definition involve the formaliza-tion of a set of practices or norms, they
are not merely the reflection of underlying social or economic forces. A disjuncture may
emerge between preferences and insti? tutional structures. Unfortunately, just because the
dis? juncture is sufficiently severe to motivate reform, there is no guarantee that the reforms
undertaken will have the intended effect.