Social Clubs and Political Office

Elites maintain disproportionate political power even in formally inclusive political systems, yet the institutions through which they coordinate and reproduce this advantage remain poorly understood. We study membership in the Buenos Aires Jockey Club---Argentina's most prominent elite social club---exploiting staggered variation in family entry. Using difference-in-differences techniques, we find that Jockey Club membership increased the probability of holding legislative office by approximately four percentage points---more than twice the control-group mean. Consistent with a network-based mechanism, membership also increased families' centrality in elite marriage networks---a resource that can facilitate political success through access to party nominations and voter mobilization. This electoral advantage declines substantially after the 1912 Sáenz Peña democratizing reforms, suggesting that the political returns to club membership are conditional on institutional contexts that make elite network connections valuable. Our findings shed light on how elite social institutions reproduce political inequality where personal connections are essential for accessing political office.