Legislative Career Patterns in Argentina and Paraguay

Within the studies of political parties in comparative politics, there is growing interest in examining the characteristics and analyzing the ways in which politicians of these parties follow certain political careers. The political carreers can reflect different tendencies in the level of professionalization and characteristics of the political parties of the political class. Upon analyzing the political trajectories of the legislators in the Chamber of Deputies, this paper examines the following questions while analyzing the political parties in the two most recent legislatures of Argentina and Paraguay: What kind of politicians end up in the Chamber of Deputies? Where do come from and what is their experience, and based on this experience, in which way do they intend to continue their political career? Patterns in legislative carrers depend to a large extent on institutional factors and structures within the political system that may influence their aspirations in terms of the trends of the political elite in general. Given the general objectives, the specific aim of this paper is, first, to define operationalize the concept of professionalization in order to establish a framework to describe the patterns of legislative careers, in addition to analyzing the extent to which these conditions produce certain political trajectories, as well as describing the way in which these tendencies can imply patterns of professionalization in the case of Paraguayan and Argentine political parties from a comparative perspective.