Political and Institutional Determinants of the Executive's Legislative Success in Latin America

Bibliographic Data

ID6235501
AuthorsArgelina Cheibub Figueiredo (0000-0002-7921-820X, Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro), Denise Lopes Salles (Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro), Marcelo Martins Vieira (Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro)
Year2009
Volume3
Issue2
Pages155-171
Publication date2009-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBrazilian Political Science Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1981-3821 • E-ISSN: 1981-3821
PublisherFapUNIFESP (SciELO) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1590/1981-3862200900020006
OpenAlexW2405871540
SCIELO_PIDS1981-38212009000200155
LanguageEN
Citations received13
References cited17

fails, the government falls.In presidential systems, on the contrary, given the president's fixed term, legislative success depends on various dimensions of the process that follows the inauguration of the president, including the formation of coalition governments.The legislative success of the executive in presidential systems varies greatly, as shown by the sample of countries covered here.The yearly average of presidential bills enacted ranges from zero, as in Colombia, to 98.8%, as in Mexico.On the other hand, Latin American presidential countries also vary greatly as to their institutional framework and to the political conditions under which governments rule.Therefore, they make up an exceptional array of cases to compare.This research note is divided into three sections.In the next section, we trace an overall picture of presidential governments in the region from 1979 to 2006.In the third section, we describe the variables, present the hypotheses and discuss the results of a multivariate analysis of the executive's legislative success. Latin american Presidential GovernmentDespite some attempts to single out a Latin American model of presidentialism, the political and institutional diversity in government organization among the continent's countries recommends caution in generalizing.This is transparent in our sample of twelve countries for the period 1979-2006.The sample includes all South American countries except Peru and the Guyanas, two countries in Central America (Costa Rica and Panama) and Mexico.Considering the period covered, we work with 200 year-country observations.The details are laid out in Table 1, which distinguishes between three sets of countries according to the type of government they experienced during the period analysed: oneparty, coalition or both.It is worth noting that we do not consider only the first coalition formed at the beginning of a president's term, but all coalition reshuffles by the same president.The duration of governments therefore does not necessarily coincide with the president's term.In order to identify the beginning and end of the coalitions, we employed the same criteria to define the making and breaking of governments in parliamentary systems, namely: "1) any changes in the set of parties holding cabinet membership; 2) any change in the identity of the prime minister [or the president]; and 3) any general election, whether mandated by the end of the constitutional inter-election period, or precipitated by a premature dissolution of parliament" (Müller and Strom 2000, 12).These criteria are sufficiently general to be applicable to the formation of and changes in governments in the presidential system, with slight modifications that do not affect comparability with parliamentary countries

Executive branch · Latin Americans · Legislature · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Politics and Society in Latin America

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