Legislatures and the Dispute over Public Policies in Dictatorship and Democracy

Abstract

Regime transitions raise expectations of policy change. However, such changes do not always take place and the empirical evidence linking regime type and policy is not conclusive. To better un- derstand the heterogeneous effect that regime transitions have on policy, this work presents a historical comparative analysis of the role played by legislatures in the space for contestation over policy before and after the 1980s democratization processes in Argentina and Brazil. It shows the relevance of such legislatures across regime types and how the changes in their roles with the expansion of the space for contestation affected the likelihood and type of policy change in policies with different levels of visibility.