Ethics and the Public Function: Evaluation of Legislative Effectiveness in Mexico

Abstract

This paper addresses the study of the ethics of responsibility in the legislative function of the Chamber of Deputies of the H. Congress of the Union, from the perspective of evaluating the work of federal deputies, and seeks to answer the following question: Is the work of the Federal Deputies in the Chamber of Deputies efficient? The purpose is how to measure and evaluate the performance in the legislative function of the Federal Deputies? and with that, to approach to identify if is the work performed by these public representatives efficient and ethical? The work is integrated in three parts. The first is the concept of the ethics of responsibility and the legislative function. In the second section, the proposal of an indicator to measure legislative efficiency is presented and the case of the federal deputies of the LXI Legislature representing the State of Veracruz of Ignacio de la Llave is analyzed. Finally, the third part presents a proposal for citizen action based on information on legislative efficiency and the need to demand compliance with ethical responsibility in the legislative function. As important conclusions of the evaluation of the legislative efficiency of the federal deputies of the LXI Legislature, it shows at least two important results: i) The legislative effectiveness index (IEL) shows very low levels, both at the plenary level of the Chamber of Deputies, as at the level of the study group of federal deputies representing the State of Veracruz. ii) In both cases, they show a very high legislative lag index. An alternative is the citizen's demand for ethical compliance with responsibility in the legislative function when knowing the evaluation of results, which serves as a reference to identify scenarios of political choice based on results.