Family business : causes and consequences of political dynasties

Abstract

I explore the causes of the existence of political dynasties in democratic societies. In particular, I investigate the causal relationship between tenure length and posterior dynastic success. Since tenure length is potentially endogenous in a model of political dynasties, I exploit a natural experiment in Argentina that provides a source of exogenous variation for tenure length. I find that having a longer tenure in Congress increases the probability of having a relative in future congresses. I also find that dynastic legislators have lower performance than non-dynastic legislators.