This article belongs to a field of work that deals with the relationships between the legislative political arena and electoral politics, relations that have been referred to as "electoral connection". Our goal is to analyze the interaction between these two arenas within a system of sub-national political representation: the Paraná state legislature. Through looking at the relationship between the individual legislative action of state representatives within the 14th legislative period of the Paraná State Legislative Assembly (Assembléia Legislativa do Paraná (ALEP)) and the legislative performance of those who ran for re-election we seek to identify possible interdependence between individual parliamentary activity and re-election. For these purposes, in addition to putting together a voting typology on electoral results for candidates seeking re-election (looking at whether voting is regionally concentrated or not as dependent variable), our model also includes three sets of explanatory variables. The first is made up of variables regarding institutionalized political position (parliamentary group affiliation, ideology, political party, position occupied within the legislature, number of ALEP mandates served and position on polemic issues). The second looks at the visibility of the mandate (number of times that representatives appear in the most important state daily newspaper and context in which he or she appears). The third group of explanatory variables has to do specifically with individual legislative activity (type of bills proposed, geographic scope of proposal, number of bills proposed, number of projects approved during the mandate.) Through looking at the relationship between the different variables that make up the model in tests for interdependence or regression, our analytic model reveals the existence of a strong correlation between regionally-concentrated voting and chances of re-election. Explanatory variables on political position and mandate visibility have a weak ability to explain type of voting, whereas some variables on individual legislative production have revealed a high degree of correlation with regionalized voting and, therefore, with enhanced chances for re-election.
electoral connection; state representatives; legislative action; state of Paraná
