Buying time to work outside: the effect of legislative leave reform in Uruguay, 1994–2020

ABSTRACT In modern democracies, legislatures have developed ways for their members to resolve individual time allocation dilemmas. For example, the allocation of budget resources to enhance staff capacity and open district offices improves the efficiency of legislators’ work. The Uruguayan Parliament invests few resources in this type of activity. However, it has created a unique legislative leave mechanism by which members are granted time to do work outside of the Uruguayan Parliament, leaving in their place low-profile alternates loyal to the legislator’s party. In this article, I describe the reform of the legislators’ leave regime and I explain how deputies make strategic use of this device.