Abstract
The political science received wisdom on Latin America in the late 1980s and early 1990s was that countries where presidents enjoyed strong constitutional powers and where multiparty coalitions prevailed would be doomed to instability and institutional crises while countries boasting weak presidents and strong parties were expected to consolidate democratic rule. After almost two decades this prediction failed. Recent reconceptualizations of presidentialism have partly corrected the flaws in the established diagnosis but left unexplained the role of checks and balances and rule of law in containing presidential abuse and guaranteeing governability. The chapter argues that the key to solving the paradox of strong presidents and robust democracies is that democratic stability (or lack thereof) in Latin American countries has been engendered by the existence of an extended system of checks and balances and rule of law, which are ultimately generated by political competition and power fragmentation.
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Notes
The expression comes from Peter Siavelis, “Continuity and Change in the Chilean Party System: On the Transformational Effect of Electoral Reform,” Comparative Political Studies 30 (1997): 651–674;
and Peter Siavelis, “The Hidden Logic of Candidate Selection for Chilean Parliamentary Election,” Comparative Politics 34 (2002): 419–438. Uruguay—also a case of exaggerated presidentialism—would also be in this group of countries whereas Argentina has seen great institutional deterioration. Although Uruguay does not share some of the features mentioned such as open list proportional representation or large number of effective parties, party support is fragmented due to the high degree of intraparty factionalism. The predictions for Uruguay were that it would also be doomed to fail.
Figueiredo, Jacobi and Weingast (2006) have coined such an integrated approach the “new-separation-of-powers approach.” Rui J. P. De Figueiredo, T. Jacobi, and B. Weingast, “The New Separation of Powers Approach to American Politics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Political Economy, ed. B. Weingast and D. Wittman (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).
Useful reviews of the debate are: John Carey, “Presidential Versus Parliamentary Government,” in Handbook of New Institutional Economics, ed. Claude Ménard and Mary Shirley (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005);
J. Cheibub, Presidentialism, Parliamentarism and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
These are more than compensated by their vast partisan powers. Shugart and Mainwaring (1997) postulate this as a general pattern; where presidents have little in the way of constitutional prerogatives they also tend to have more partisan powers. The normative model behind this proposition is obviously the United States. Matthew S. Shugart and Scott Mainwaring, Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).
For a dissenting view, see Valenzuela (2008) where he essentially reasserts his earlier view. Samuel Valenzuela, “Los partidos políticos y los desafíos de la gobernabilidad democrática en América Latina,” in Reforma de los partidos políticos en Chile, ed. Arturo Fontaine, Cristian Larroulet, Jorge Navarrete, and Ignacio Walker (Santiago: UNDP, Consorcio CIEPLAN, CEP, Libertad y Desarrollo and Proyectamérica, 2008).
These claims are based on extensions of formal models of coalition formation under parliamentarism, developed by political economists. Coalition formation is modeled as a noncooperative game (D. Austen Smith and J. S. Banks, “Elections, Coalitions and Legislative Outcomes,” American Political Science Review 82 (1988): 405–422.
This association is due to the fact that military rule was more frequent under presidential regimes. See José A. Cheibub and Fernando Limongi, “Democratic Institutions and Regime Survival: Parliamentary and Presidential Democracy Reconsidered,” Annual Review of Political Science 5 (2002): 151–179.
In fact, the interaction between assemblies and presidents has been modeled as a distinctive bilateral veto game, where the presidents define his or her strategy depending on the type of legislature he/ she anticipates. Depending on which type of legislature (recalcitrant, workable, subservient, or parochial-venal), the president will adopt an optimal strategy to deal with it (Garry Cox and Scott Morgenstern, “Epilogue: Latin America’s Reactive Assemblies and Proactive Presidents,” in Legislative Politics in Latin America, ed. Scott Morgenstern and Benito Naciff (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
On the dynamics of accountability within legistature, see John Carey, “What Sort of Strong Presidents?” in Making Presidentialism Work, ed. Andrew Ellis, J.J. Oroszco Henriquez, and D. Zovatto (Goteborg: IDEA, 2009).
See Pablo Spiller and Mariano Tommasi, The Institutional Foundation of Public Policy in Argentina: ATransaction Cost Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), for an extended analysis.
Copei and AD supported an independent candidate in the 1998 election that led Chavez to the presidency. See Javier Corrales and Michael Penfold, Dragon in the Tropics: Hugo Chavez and the Political Economy of Revolution in Venezuela (Washington: Brookings Press, 2011).
In some cases, presidents are impeached by the legislature following procedures specified in the Constitution; in other cases, they leave their posts amidst massive public outrage, usually after media scandals involving corruption and are proved connections to drug cartels. More often, these two aspects are intertwined. See Aníbal Pérez-Liñán, Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in Latin America (Cambridge University Press, 2007) and Kathryn Hochstetler, “Rethinking Presidentialism: The Challenges of and Presidential Falls in Latin America,” Comparative Politics 38 (4) (2006). The role played by the legislature varies, ranging from a marginal role, where street protests dominate, to a proactive role following denouncements by legislators. Presidents in these cases invariably count on minority support and have declining popular approval, while attempting to implement unpopular economic reforms. The former case raises concern and suggests that the legislature is being bypassed in their constitutional role of overseeing executives’ actions.
The data is for an index of effectiveness computed by Santiso (2009) on the basis of scores for independence, credibility, enforcement, and timeliness and is available for a smaller set of Latin American countries. C. Santiso, The Political Economy of Government Auditing: Financial Governance and the Rule of Law in Latin America and Beyond (London: Routledge, 2009)35. While Przeworski (2003) emphasizes the role of institutions in solving problems of multiple equilibria and the role of political and social power in institutional equilibria, Weingast (1997) stresses the role of institutions as coordination devices and the role of beliefs. Barry Weingast, “Political Foundations of Democracy and the Rule of Law,” American Political Science Review 91 (1997).?
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© 2013 Marcus André Melo and Carlos Pereira
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Melo, M.A., Pereira, C. (2013). Strong President, Robust Democracy. In: Making Brazil Work. Studies of the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137310842_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137310842_2
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