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.     

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.     

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.     

The Organization of the Executive Branch in Latin America: What We Know and What We Need to Know

This article proposes a research agenda for the organization of the executive branch in Latin America by reviewing the literature on the U.S. and Latin American presidencies and outlining the research gap between them. The study finds that while strong, regionwide patterns have been established about cabinets in Latin America, research is lagging behind on the presidential center, presidential advisory networks, and their effects in policymaking. The article sets forth a series of research questions and suggests a combination of quantitative, social network, and case study strategies to address them.     

Coalition Erosion and Presidential Instability in Ecuador

This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult to sustain after the adoption of institutional reforms intended to strengthen the president's legislative powers. The adoption of those reforms, it is argued, undermined the legislative incentives to cooperate with the government and helped to accelerate coalition erosion. Not only did the reforms fail significantly to avoid policy deadlock, but in some cases they contributed to the early termination of presidential mandates. This article contributes to the study of coalition survival and how it is linked to policymaking.     

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.     

Rethinking the Politics of the Shift Left in Latin America: Towards a Relational Approach

The shift left in Latin American politics has revealed critical weaknesses within the dominant structural, state‐ and society‐based explanations concerning the politics of development in the region. This article argues that while elements of each remain relevant, there is a strong case for adopting a ‘relational’ frame of analysis that can capture the specific ways in which the Left came to power, and the unfolding implications for democracy and development. This relational approach focuses on how the new social and political economy basis of the new ruling coalitions and alternative geopolitical alliances shape politics and the prospects for development in the region.     

Municipal Governance,Environmental Management and Disaster Risk Reduction in Chile

Given the vulnerability of Latin American countries to extreme events of climatic and geophysical origin and the frequency of these events, how do local governments manage environmental and disaster risk reduction? This article contributes to the Latin American literature about environmental management and disaster risk reduction at the local level. Employing a comparative perspective, the article examines and explains the responses of Chilean municipalities and the role of municipal commitments and social capital.     

Presidential activism and government termination in dual-executive Ukraine

The limits on presidential authority in premier-presidential regimes permit legislatures to wield preeminent influence over government formation and termination. This article shows that even without formal powers to dismiss the prime minister, the president may play a decisive role in government replacement. The article compares three successful and one failed attempt by the president to unseat the prime minister in Ukraine under a premier-presidential system. Based on a review of the significance of 10 variables accounting for presidential activism, it finds that the president’s informal control over institutional veto players as well as the unity of his party faction and cooperation of opposition groups were necessary for the success of attempted cabinet turnover.     

Compulsory Voting and Income Inequality: Evidence for Lijphart's Proposition from Venezuela

What difference does it make if the state makes people vote? The question is central to normative debates about the rights and duties of citizens in a democracy, and to contemporary policy debates in a number of Latin American countries over what actions states should take to encourage electoral participation. Focusing on a rare case of abolishing compulsory voting in Venezuela, this article shows that not forcing people to vote yielded a more unequal distribution of income. The evidence supports Arend Lijphart's claim, advanced in his 1996 presidential address to the American Political Science Association, that compulsory voting can offset class bias in turnout and, in turn, contribute to the equality of influence.     

A Two‐Level Theory of Presidential Instability

This article analyzes the conditions that facilitate the ousting of Latin American presidents and the mechanisms that prevent their downfall. Drawing lessons from the impeachment of Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo, it extends previous arguments about the “legislative shield” to show that the same forces that sometimes conspire to terminate an administration at other times work to resist its demise. The argument underscores the interaction between legislators and social movements, two prominent actors in the literature on presidential instability. The article presents a two‐level theory to identify possible configurations of mass and legislative alignments, and tests some implications of the theory with data for 116 Latin American presidents over 28 years. Multiple comparison tests based on random effects logistic models show that popular protests can be neutralized by strong support in Congress, and hint at the possibility that legislative threats can be neutralized by loyal demonstrators in the streets.     

Explaining Electoral Volatility in Latin America: Evidence at the Party Level

Many existing explanations of electoral volatility have been tested at the country level, but they are largely untested at the individual party level. This study reexamines theories of electoral volatility through the use of multilevel models on party‐level data in the lower house elections of 18 Latin American countries from 1978 to 2012. Testing hypotheses at different levels, it finds that irregular institutional alteration increases electoral volatility for all the parties in a country, but the effect is more significant for the presidential party. At the party level, the results show that while a party that is more ideologically distinctive than other parties tends to experience lower electoral volatility, party age is not a statistically significant factor for explaining party volatility.     

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.     

Latin American Democracy. What to Do with the Leaders?

The democratic deficit, or the gap between citizens' aspirations and their level of satisfaction, is increasing in Latin America. Such dissatisfaction helps to understand many of the region's presidential crises: since 1985, 23 Latin American presidents have left government abruptly. While civil society may have been able to provoke the fall of presidents, it has not managed to avoid the re‐emergence of deep‐rooted political practices under subsequent administrations. Extreme presidentialism, clientelism and populism have re‐emerged strengthened after deep political crises. This article offers some ideas regarding the impact that different types of political leaders can have on how well democracy works.     

Can Anyone Stop the President? Power Asymmetries and Term Limits in Latin America, 1984–2016

Since the late twentieth century, numerous Latin American nations have launched efforts to relax presidential term limits, often successfully. This article discusses the conditions under which countries succeed in relaxing term limits. Drawing from bargaining models and reviewing 36 cases, it makes three arguments. First, actors' preferences are fairly predictable on the basis of officeholding: presidents are the most prominent actors pushing for expansion of term limits; opposition parties lead the resistance. Second, power asymmetry, measured by presidential approval ratings, is the best predictor of success, better than ideology or share of seats in Congress. Third, the only hope for stopping popular presidents rests with ruling parties and the courts, but only when the latter are sufficiently independent.     

The Problematic Relation between Direct Democracy and Accountability in Latin America: Evidence from the Bolivian Case

During the wave of constitutional reforms, which started in the late 1980s, Institutions of Direct Democracy (IDD) have been incorporated into most Latin American constitutions, and over the past fifteen years, an increased use of these instruments by Latin American governments has been observed. This article deals with two questions related to this phenomenon: (1) what motivated the adoption and use of these institutions; and (2) what consequences can be expected with regard to democratic accountability in the region? To answer these questions, first, a classification of IDD is developed. In this, special attention is paid to the ability of the various types of IDD to introduce accountability into the representative structures of presidential systems. This classification is subsequently applied to analyse constitutional frameworks and direct democratic experience in the region. The findings suggest that the rise of IDD in Latin America was mainly induced by executive‐legislative conflict and has done little to foster accountability. Finally, therefore, a detailed account of the specific constellation that led to the adoption of IDD in Bolivia is analysed in order to illustrate under which circumstances political actors choose to adopt and employ these tools.     

Candidate Recruitment and Selection in Latin America: A Framework for Analysis

This article provides a theoretical framework for analyzing the recruitment and selection of legislative candidates in Latin America. It argues that political recruitment and candidate selection are undertheorized for Latin America yet have determinative impacts on political systems, often overriding the influence of more commonly studied institutional variables. The article elucidates a typology of legislative candidates based on the legal and party variables that lead to the emergence of particular selection methods, as well as the patterns of loyalty generated by those methods. It analyzes the recruitment and selection processes as independent and dependent variables, underscoring the significant effect these procedures have on the incentive structure and subsequent behavior of legislators. Those factors, in turn, have important consequences for democratic governability and the performance of presidentialism.     

Presidentas Rise: Consequences for Women in Cabinets?

Since 1999, women have democratically won the presidency eight times in Latin America and have named hundreds of ministers. This study argues that under certain conditions, presidentas are more likely than male presidents to improve women's cabinet representation. Two mechanisms, presidenta mandates and gendered networks, appear to drive the relationship. Furthermore, because the pool of ministerial candidates is shallower for women than for men, presidentas are most likely to advance women's representation in cabinets at the beginning of their term and for “feminine” ministries. A case study of Michelle Bachelet's 2006 ministerial appointments reveals initial evidence for the argument. Empirical implications are then tested with an original dataset of 1,908 ministers of all democratically elected Latin American presidents since 1999. Model results are consistent with the theory that presidentas are most likely to “make a difference” when they are least constrained by the supply of female ministerial candidates.     

Global Shift: The U.N. System and the New Regionalism in Latin America

This study analyzes Latin America in light of the post–Cold War transformation of the global system. Much of Latin American foreign policy studies traditionally has been concerned with the region's subordinate position to "core" countries (generally, developed states and their ruling elites) and the degree to which these countries' policies constrain Latin American policies and development. While this juxtaposition is still a major topic, it ignores the leverage of new "spheres of authority" (SOAs), where global rules and norms are increasingly sustained. A hypothesis presented here is that the U.N. system is an example of such an SOA, which creates a new context for the insertion of periphery demands in the international agenda. A second hypothesis is that such insertion is increasingly made through the creation of new regional groupings, which are an expression of national development and security demands. Such processes carry both new possibilities and challenges.