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What is the effect of constitutional decree authority (CDA) on the policy-making process of a presidential regime? Despite recent efforts to answer this question, there is still much uncertainty in the literature about the extent to which decree powers may allow presidents to control the legislative process. This article argues that in a separation-of powers system, the existence of CDA effectively enhances executives' ability to act as agenda setters. This capacity, however, is not uniform across all cases. Developing a simple spatial model of decree games, the author argues that the bargaining power of an executive to promote legal changes through decrees varies according to three interrelated factors: decree approval rules, the extent of the executive's partisan support in the legislature, and the strength of the presidential veto. These propositions are supported by a comparative analysis of the process of constitutional design and the implementation of decrees in Brazil and Argentina, two cases presenting significant variation in each of the independent variables. Keywords: presidentialism; decree powers; policy making; Latin America; Brazil; Argentina

Observing the destructive impact of the seventeenth century European wars of religion, Thomas Hobbes concluded that man by himself is incapable of preserving peace and order. He assumed that peace [...]

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 1978-200 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of presidential regimes claim that while the combination of plurality rule for presidential elections and concurrent electoral cycles favors bipartism, majority rule for electing presidents favors multipartism. I argue that a reverse causality also affects the relationship between party systems and electoral systems. Using a bargaining model of institutional change, I propose that while dominant and large parties are likely to choose plurality rule and concurrent elections, small parties are likely to choose majority rule. I also argue that military rulers and military-civilian coalitions tend to follow the logic of electoral choice of small parties. These hypotheses are supported by a statistical analysis of the determinants of electoral choice in 49 cases of constitutional change in Latin America. Mechanisms of choice are analyzed in several episodes of electoral reform, including a negative case that suggests explanations of electoral choice not covered by the model presented in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2000, Mexican politics has changed in two important ways. First, the PRI's defeat in the 2000 elections has ended a 70-year long one-party system. Second, the president no longer holds a majority in either chamber of a bicameral congress. In what is likely to be a new era of divided government, constitutional engineers proposed a multitude of constitutional reforms to promote good governance under a separation of powers system. While some reforms attempt to decrease the likelihood of minority presidents, others aim at strengthening the constitutional powers of the president. This paper argues that a viable and desirable strategy of constitutional change should avoid these two extremes. Instead, reforms should generate incentives to promote inter-branch cooperation during divided government. This paper discusses the benefits of a partial reform consisting of two parts: 1) electoral rules that promote correspondence between the preferences of citizens and those of policy makers and 2) constitutional powers that encourage coordination between the president and the congress in the process of policy making and cabinet formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]