Executive‐Legislative Deadlocks in the Dominican Republic

This study analyzes the causes of executive‐legislative deadlocks in the Dominican Republic in the period 1978–2005. Deadlocks are considered a pernicious element in (presidential) democracies. The study applies a combination of simple statistical techniques and process tracing to test four institutional hypotheses, which argue that certain institutional and party system constellations increase the probability of deadlocks. The hypotheses point to necessary causes of deadlocks, but their predictions are imprecise. Presidents' persuasive powers and coalition building have helped alleviate the deadlock problem. Analysis of the deadlock periods shows that the additional triggering or sufficient causes for deadlocks are either exogenous to the political institutions or related to the instability of coalitions in the nation's nonideological party system, which consists of three almost equal‐sized parties.     

Las reformas políticas en el gobierno de Sebastián Piñera Chile, 2010-2013

This paper analyzes political reforms carried out by Sebastián Piñera’s government in Chile. Te reforms considered are those that his Coalition for Change campaigned on as part of the presidential and legislative elections in 2009. Tese reforms promised an improvement in the quality of democracy, and promised its consolidation, including increased political participation, in order to counter the most common criticisms of institutions of representation. Throughout this process, the government showed little receptivity to proposals coming from other sectors, both of the ruling coalition and the opposition; furthermore, it paid scant attention to growing citizen protests and their demands voiced since his second year of government. Te information analyzed conveys little progress in decentralization and in the importance that players with veto powers were gaining within the ruling coalition.     

‘Sowing the Seeds of Love’? Determinants of Local Coalition Formation and Termination between the CDU and the Greens, 1994–2016

Drawing on empirical evidence from 11 CDU–Green coalitions in large German municipalities, this article investigates the determinants of formation and termination of black–green minimal winning coalitions. Such coalitions are likely to be formed if the mayor is a party member of either the CDU or the Greens, if one of the two parties dominates the local party system, and if the SPD suffers from severe vote losses. Furthermore, the results indicate that CDU–Green coalitions are primarily formed if neither the CDU nor the Greens have gained a parliamentary majority with their ‘usual’ coalition partners. Ideological connectivity, however, does not play a major role. Regarding coalition stability, Christian Democrats and Greens are able to govern successfully for an entire legislative term in most of the cases. If a coalition is terminated early, however, this is due to a party breaking the coalition agreement by voting on specific policies together with the SPD in the local council.     

The Ambiguity of Veto Power in Coalitions: German Liberals' Role as a Watchdog in Justice and Home Affairs and their Failure to Sell Stalemate as Success in the Federal Elections of 2013

The article demonstrates that the rigid use of veto capacity in coalitions causes risks for re-election. Justice was a high-salience domain of the German Liberal Democratic Party (FDP), which occupied this portfolio in its coalition with the Conservative majority in the federal legislative period from 2009 to 2013. By analysing several legislative projects the article shows that their contents or non-adoption were an effect of liberals' vetoes. This policy-seeking strategy provoked conflicts within the coalition and stalemate making it impossible to realise popular measures that would have enhanced the Liberals' reputation and the importance of the domain for the voters who were mainly interested in economic and social policy. Moreover, the Liberals' vetoes led to a loss of support from its major coalition partner in the pre-election campaign. Thus governmental parties have to trade off policy and vote-seeking goals in order to get re-elected.     

Do Minority Cabinets Govern More Flexibly and Inclusively? Evidence from Germany

A widespread view in political science is that minority cabinets govern more flexibly and inclusively, more in line with a median-oriented and 'consensual' vision of democracy. Yet there is only little empirical evidence for it. We study legislative coalition-building in the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia, which was ruled by a minority government between 2010 and 2012. We compare the inclusiveness of legislative coalitions under minority and majority cabinets, based on 1028 laws passed in the 1985–2017 period, and analyze in detail the flexibility of legislative coalition formation under the minority government. Both quantitative analyses are complemented with brief case studies of specific legislation. We find, first, that the minority cabinet did not rule more inclusively. Second, the minority cabinet’s legislative flexibility was fairly limited; to the extent that it existed, it follows a pattern that cannot be explained on the basis of the standard spatial model with policy-seeking parties.     

German Defence Policy under the Second Merkel Chancellorship

The CDU/CSU/FDP coalition (2009–13) has witnessed the emergence of three important changes in the international security environment: the US ‘Asia Pivot’, the global financial crisis and the fallout from Germany's backseat role in the Libya crisis. This article examines how German defence policy has adapted to this changing context. It explores the reforms which have taken place to the Bundeswehr's structure and military capability procurement process under defence ministers Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg and Thomas de Mazière. The article also looks at German policy toward defence cooperation through CSDP and NATO. The article finds that while some important changes have been enacted to German defence policy, Germany is failing to properly adapt to the changing strategic environment. The article concludes by examining key defence policy challenges facing the government over the 2013–17 legislative period and the implications of the analysis for theoretical debates on German defence policy.     

Legislative Coalitions in Presidential Systems: The Case of Uruguay

The article analyzes executive‐legislative relations in Uruguay between 1985 and 2005. It demonstrates that even after controlling for ideological affinity and acknowledging that ideology affects presence in the cabinet, legislators whose factions hold ministerial positions behave in a more progovernment way than their ideology would predict. This result not only shows that coalitions “work” but suggests that they work because the presidents use resources under their control to attract support from legislators. This article presents a systematic analysis of executive‐legislative relations in multiparty settings that builds on the finding that nonideologically contiguous coalitions often form to separate the ideological from the strategic determinants of legislative behavior. It also contributes to the literature by presenting a new set of roll call data and, more generally, highlights the risks of attempting to infer ideology directly from legislative behavior in presidential multiparty settings.     

Insurance for Good Losers and the Survival of Chile's Concertación

In the transition from military rule to democracy, the government of Augusto Pinochet bequeathed to Chile a unique electoral law by which all legislative seats are contested in two-member districts. A key implication of this rule is that in order to secure legislative majorities, coalitions have to put their strongest candidates in the most precarious electoral list positions. This generates a divergence of interests between coalitions and politicians. Chile's largest coalition, the Concertación, has resolved the dilemma by providing appointed posts to unsuccessful congressional candidates who accept personal political risk on the coalition's behalf. This study argues that this insurance system has provided the critical glue to hold the coalition together since Chile's transition to democracy in 1990. Recent changes in the electoral environment could threaten the Concertación's control over the appointed posts that have sustained this informal institution. This could jeopardize the Concertación's cohesion during the process of negotiating coalition candidate lists for the 2005 legislative elections.     

Minority Presidents and Democratic Performance in Latin America

A widely accepted argument among scholars of Latin American presidential regimes is that interbranch cooperation is impaired when the president's party falls short of a majority of seats in the legislature. This argument fails to consider three factors that affect the performance of minority presidents: the policy position of the president's party, the president's capacity to sustain a veto, and the legislative status of the parties included in the cabinet. This article argues that the greatest potential for conflict in a presidential regime occurs when the president's party lacks the support of both the median and the veto legislator and no cabinet coalition holding a majority of legislative seats is formed. This hypothesis is supported using data on executive-legislative conflicts and on interrupted presidencies in Latin America during the period 1978–2003.     

The German Lander and EU enlargement: Between apple pie and issue linkage

While the government parties had blamed the lingering burden of unification and the global economic crisis for the bulk of Germany's troubles in the 2002 election campaign, the topic of gridlock and policy reform is re-entering the agenda of German politics. From a scientific view, the analysis of Schröder's potential for policy change imposes some challenges. Germany needs reforms in many policy areas, in particular in the economic and societal domains. We present a new method to measure the positions of political parties on many issues. To identify the structural causes for German gridlock we apply the spatial model for legislative choice, which uncovers the room for manoeuvre. More precisely, we intend to show how much potential for policy change the Schröder government will have in economic, societal and foreign policy, and which policy position will be promoted by the Red–Green coalition in these areas.     

Minimum Winning Electoral Coalitions Under Presidentialism: Reality or Fiction? The Case of Brazil

This article studies the motivations of party leaders to form "minimum winning" electoral coalitions—alliances that cease to be winning if one member is subtracted. In Brazil, concurrent elections stimulate political actors' coordination, and electoral alliances are allowed. In 2002 and 2006, moreover, the Electoral Supreme Court obliged those parties with presidential candidates to replicate this electoral arrangement in the district. Under "verticalization," parties with presidential candidates could not form alliances with rival parties in the concurrent legislative and gubernatorial elections. Verticalization arguably pushed party leaders to form minimum winning electoral coalitions. This new rule forced them to reconsider the contributions of each possible ally in the elections for president, federal deputy, and governor. Examining the elections from 1998 to 2006, this study finds that under verticalization, while parties did form more electoral coalitions with those partners they considered crucial to win, they did so at the expense of policy.     

Election through complaint and controversy for political power in Chile, 1874–1925

SUMMARY

This article offers reflections on the power relations between the executive and legislative branches of the Chilean state by examining the way political parties leveraged the electoral system to balance the weight of each branch in the configuration of government. The period from 1874 to 1924 is framed by a cycle of reforms to Chile’s 1833 constitution that were pushed through by liberal sectors to limit the power of the executive under the country’s presidential regime, efforts that contributed to a final breakdown of the presidential regime following civil war in 1891. That year the victorious revolutionary forces implemented a parliamentarian system that remained in place until it was overthrown by a military coup. The literature on this process has studied the use of legislative manoeuvres such as obstruction, accusation and filibuster by political parties to weaken the executive power. Little has been written, however, about the way parties exploited the rules and procedures of the electoral system and, specifically, the use of official complaints and the process known as calificación (qualification) by which congress audited final election results. This article will help fill that void, focusing on understanding how both practices worked and the effects that the election reforms of 1874, 1884 and 1890 had on them.     

Coalitional presidentialism and legislative control in post-Soviet Ukraine

Two political scientists explore the significance of pro-presidential legislative coalitions in Ukrainian politics since 2000. They draw on an original survey of MPs and cabinet data to engage with the extant analysis of coalitional politics in Ukraine. Using the framework of “coalitional presidentialism,” which was first developed in the study of Latin American presidential systems, they find evidence to suggest that legislative coalitions are a meaningful feature of Ukrainian legislative life, and point to the tools that presidents use to maintain them.     

Education,Federalism and the 2013 Bundestag Elections

The cycle of introducing and recalibrating reforms has become a hallmark of German education policy; progress in updating institutions and policies and educational outcomes is dogged by chronic problems. The drivers of change have been a medley of interests, actors, and socio-economic conditions. Institutional change has blended with established policy-making patterns and a move towards greater ideological pragmatism. Due to its national significance, education is prominently positioned in coalition agreements that precede the formation of a new government but plays a marginal role in federal election campaigns. Its treatment in the 2013 coalition agreement between the CDU/CSU and the SPD reaffirms continuity in broad policy goals; the omission of important questions exposed ongoing battles over jurisdiction that are closely tied to conflicts over authority and funding. The results fit a pattern in which flexible policy adjustments and fund distribution result from negotiations among interlocking networks of policy entrepreneurs.     

Budgetary Politics and Veto Players

In this article we examine whether and how the policy‐oriented coalition building and the gridlock model of legislative choice explain changes in the allocation of German budgetary items between 1961 and 1994. The policy‐oriented coalition‐building approach suggests that only policy‐connected budgetary actors can make changes in the budgetary composition, while the location of the status quo is essential for budgetary modifications according to the gridlock model. We also draw the attention to the identification of the set of relevant budgetary veto players and their preferences by distinguishing between models of the government, the political parties of the Bundestag, and the two of them. We test the predictive power of these approaches and conceptions in a competitive manner and control for macroeconomic and other political factors that might influence changes in the budgetary allocation. Our findings show that the gridlock model better explains budgetary changes, and that the government is responsible for decreasing, but the political parties of the Bundestag majority are decisive for increasing the size of budgetary items. We conclude that identifying the relevant veto players and using these more sophisticated approaches on budgetary decision making provide significant insights into the political reasons for changing the allocation of the German budget.     

‘Conflict and confrontation’: A comparison of the effect of trade embargoes on executive‐legislative relations in the USA during the Truman and Reagan years

This article examines the conflict between the American Congress and Presidency in US trade embargo policy during the Truman and Reagan years. After reviewing two cases of legislative‐executive confrontation over trade embargoes against the Soviet Union in the late‐1940s and early‐1950s and South Africa in the 1980s, it concludes that Congress has been successful in modifying presidential policy‐making that it believes does not serve the national interest. This is due to its powerful position in the American political process as the initiator of legislation. Its law making powers have allowed it to review executive foreign policy decisions forcing the Presidency to change its approach to particular policy concerns.     

Agenda control in the Bundestag, 1980–2002

We find strong evidence of monopoly legislative agenda control by government parties in the Bundestag. First, the government parties have near-zero roll rates, while the opposition parties are often rolled over half the time. Second, only opposition parties' (and not government parties') roll rates increase with the distances of each party from the floor median. Third, almost all policy moves are towards the government coalition (the only exceptions occur during periods of divided government). Fourth, roll rates for government parties skyrocket when they fall into the opposition and roll rates for opposition parties plummet when they enter government, while policy movements go from being nearly 100 per cent rightward when there is a rightist government to 100 per cent leftward under a leftist government.     

Rules of Procedure as a Cause of Legislative Paralysis: The Case of Costa Rica, 2002–2012

Research on executive‐legislative relations in Latin America has focused on the impact of minority presidents and multiparty legislatures on legislative productivity. But an additional deadlock scenario, the blocking of a majority president by a minority through filibustering, has been understudied. This article analyzes filibustering in Costa Rica and explains the legislative paralysis in the wake of the nation's transition to a multiparty system in 2002. Legislative paralysis is seen as a product of the interaction between increased legislative fragmentation and polarization and the legislature's preexisting rules of procedure, which enable legislators easily to block bills they oppose, even when those bills are supported by supermajorities. This argument is tested through a comparison of major economic reforms in the 2000s to the reforms tackled in the 1990s. The role of filibustering, well acknowledged in U.S. politics, should also be studied in comparative politics.     

The Zero-sum Game of Governing Together? Effects of Merkel's Grand Coalition on the Results of the 2009 German Federal Election

Grand coalitions are highly debated in Germany, where large parts of the media and the political world expect negative effects of grand coalitions on parliamentary party systems. This did not happen either with Merkel's grand coalition resulting from the 2005 election or with other grand coalitions in the German Länder. On the contrary, only the SPD suffered heavy losses in 2009. Most experts agree that those losses were caused by the SPD's participation in the grand coalition. Still, it remains largely unclear how Merkel's grand coalition affected the 2009 federal election. To close that gap, this paper thoroughly analyses the effects of Merkel's grand coalition by looking at a crucial but mostly neglected factor in that regard, the evaluation of the grand coalition by voters. It can be shown that the CDU/CSU was mostly unaffected whereas the SPD suffered from being perceived as the less influential party in Merkel's grand coalition.