How does legislators’ behavior change after a transition to democracy? Existing studies of regime transitions typically focus on aggregate outcomes, which may reflect changes in elite composition rather than individual behavior. Yet some elites survive even after a major transition, though whether they adapt their behavior in response to new incentives is unclear. In this paper we study patterns of bill (co)sponsorship in the Mexican Chamber of Deputies between 1982 and 2012, exploiting the fact that while most formal institutions remained the same, elections became increasingly competitive.
Looking at within-individual variation, we find that legislators belonging to the ruling pri who served both before and after the 1997 electoral reform submitted many more bills in their second term than in the first. In contrast, opposition legislators and priístas elected twice before 1997 or twice afterwards did not change their behavior as much. We further exploit the fact that Mexico’s democratization proceeded at different paces in different states, finding that alternation at the subnational level had a more modest effect on legislative behavior.