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This chapter continues the examination of micro-level observable implications of the theory of incentives to represent poor people. Chapter 6 presented the three informal preference roles found in the Honduran Congress, and assessed which deputies have an incentive to represent poor people given the identity and preferences that led them to adopt their role, the capacity of poor people to monitor and sanction, and the constraints that institutions place on deputies. Here I examine whether deputies who adopt different roles behave differently, particularly with respect to poor constituents. Do they have different perspectives about whom they represent and how they should do so? Do legislative agendas differ across deputy roles, and if yes, does the legislation proposed by some types of deputies represent policy or service interests of poor sectors of society? This analysis provides a systematic basis for assessing whether the poor count, at least for some types of deputies, and how. Roles and Constituents: Whom Do You Represent? How do deputies who adopt different roles or identities define their constituents? The Honduran Constitution says only that deputies are to be representatives of the people.1 What does that mean? Do they see themselves as representatives of all the people of the country, the people of the department from which they were elected, their party, an interest group or sector of society, a community, or some other group? These are interesting questions because in a PR electoral system, deputies share their district (department) with other deputies, and each deputy as a rule does not have a unique, geographically defined district for 1. “Los diputados serán representantes del pueblo” (Article 202). SEVEN roles, attitudes, and actions: does anyone represent poor people? which he or she is known to be responsible.2 Eligibility requirements also prompt questions about who deputies will represent. A deputy can be elected in the department where they were born, or where the deputy lived for at least the last five years before the election (Article 198.5). If a deputy was born in a “periphery” department, for example Intibucá, moved to the capital years ago, but is elected on the slate for Intibucá, does that deputy know the needs and policy/service preferences of those people? How often will the deputy visit the department? Is the deputy more likely to represent the department where he or she now lives?3 Since deputies are not required to live in the department they were elected to represent, and closed-list PR elections allowed party leaders to give an activist or important donor a “safe” position on the party’s list, a deputy could win election and be reelected without knowing the people of the department.4 I asked deputies, “Please describe in some detail whom you consider the people you represent.” Most deputies in all three roles identify their department as their constituency (see table 7.1).5 Some said “I represent my department” and others “community X in my department,” while a few answered “the municipalities assigned to me by my party.” District magnitude appears to be the key to whether a deputy would define the entire department or specific 150 d o t h e p o o r c o u n t ? 2. Gracias a Diós and the Bay Islands, with DMs of one, are exceptions. Ocotepeque, with a DM of two, and Intibucá and La Paz, with DMs of three, may also be exceptions, since there is likely to be only one deputy elected by each major party, and that deputy might consider him- or herself the representative of the entire department. Deputies can informally partition their department into districts. For example, in Costa Rica deputies elected from the same party in a province each take responsibility for particular cantons (Taylor 1992). Honduran deputies in some of the larger departments mentioned that their party divided the territory among the deputy candidates, at least for the campaign. 3. The reverse can also occur. A deputy elected from the capital explained that he was born in a periphery department where his mother still lives, and people from that department come to him for help with problems because they consider him their deputy. 4. Constituency Server deputies complained about this. Part of the identity of Constituency Servers is their work staying in contact with their department. To Constituency Servers it is important to not move to Tegucigalpa and forget about the department—something they accused many other deputies of doing. 5. Responses to...

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