Parliamentary roll-call voting as a complex dynamical system: The case of Chile

Abstract

A method is proposed to study the temporal variability of legislative roll-call votes in a parliament from the perspective of complex dynamical systems. We studied the Chilean Chamber of Deputies’ by analyzing the agreement ratio and the voting outcome of each vote over the last 19 years with a Recurrence Quantification Analysis and an entropy analysis (Sample Entropy). Two significant changes in the temporal variability were found: one in 2014, where the voting outcome became more recurrent and with less entropy, and another in 2018, where the agreement ratio became less recurrent and with higher entropy. These changes may be directly related to major changes in the Chilean electoral system and the composition of the Chamber of Deputies, given that these changes occurred just after the first parliamentary elections with non-compulsory voting (2013 elections) and the first elections with a proportional system in conjunction with an increase in the number of deputies (2017 elections) were held.