Parapolitics and Roll-Call Voting in Colombia: A Bayesian Euclidean and Spherical Spatial Analysis
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866910897598889984 |
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| author | Sosa, Juan Luque, Carolina Valero, Juan |
| author_facet | Sosa, Juan Luque, Carolina Valero, Juan |
| contents | This study presents a Bayesian spatial voting analysis of the Colombian Senate during the 2006-2010 legislative period, leveraging a newly constructed roll-call dataset comprising 147 senators and 136 plenary votes. We estimate legislators' ideal points under two alternative geometric frameworks: A traditional Euclidean model and a circular model that embeds preferences on the unit circle. Both models are implemented using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, with the circular specification capturing geodesic distances and von Mises-distributed latent traits. The results reveal a latent structure in voting behavior best characterized not by a conventional left-right ideological continuum but by an opposition-non-opposition alignment. Using Bayesian logistic regression, we further investigate the association between senators' ideal points and their involvement in the para-politics scandal. Findings indicate a significant and robust relationship between political alignment and para-politics implication, suggesting that extralegal influence was systematically related to senators' legislative behavior during this period. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2503_22045 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Parapolitics and Roll-Call Voting in Colombia: A Bayesian Euclidean and Spherical Spatial Analysis Sosa, Juan Luque, Carolina Valero, Juan Methodology Applications This study presents a Bayesian spatial voting analysis of the Colombian Senate during the 2006-2010 legislative period, leveraging a newly constructed roll-call dataset comprising 147 senators and 136 plenary votes. We estimate legislators' ideal points under two alternative geometric frameworks: A traditional Euclidean model and a circular model that embeds preferences on the unit circle. Both models are implemented using Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, with the circular specification capturing geodesic distances and von Mises-distributed latent traits. The results reveal a latent structure in voting behavior best characterized not by a conventional left-right ideological continuum but by an opposition-non-opposition alignment. Using Bayesian logistic regression, we further investigate the association between senators' ideal points and their involvement in the para-politics scandal. Findings indicate a significant and robust relationship between political alignment and para-politics implication, suggesting that extralegal influence was systematically related to senators' legislative behavior during this period. |
| title | Parapolitics and Roll-Call Voting in Colombia: A Bayesian Euclidean and Spherical Spatial Analysis |
| topic | Methodology Applications |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.22045 |