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In this research note we introduce an original database covering almost a century of legislative political parties (1925-2019) and reconstruct in the long term the evolution of the president's parliamentary support and coalition formation in Latin America. We identify some long-term perspectives that show that presidentialisms in the region have undergone transformations towards a greater fragmentation of the party system, with smaller presidential parties in Congress and the presence of legislative coalitions as a support base. The evidence highlights the importance of coalitional presidentialism in the third democratic wave and has implications for the literature on the factors that explain political stability in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past democratic presidents were removed by military coups. Since the return of democracy in Latin America there were numerous presidential interruptions, but these took place via constitutional mechanisms. Governments fell, but the democratic regime remained. Over the last three decades, the experiences of presidential dropouts have led to the development of a theory about presidential interruptions, which attempts to explain the phenomenon of new presidential instability in Latin America. This paper touches on seven distinct issues, in order to add insights to the theoretical debate on presidential interruptions. These issues are: 1) presidential interruption's connection with the theory of constitutional succession; 2) the alleged breach of the fixed term and independence of powers; 3) the reconsideration of the alleged new flexibility of the presidential system; 4) timing and rules of the presidential fall and the timing and rules of the president's replacement; 5) the situation of "ruling gaps", both in relation to the presidential interruption, and the president's replacement; 6) the so-called "thin line" between the parliamentary coup and impeachment; 7) expectations and cycles of presidential strength and weakness that show a certain structural vulnerability of the system. These issues add to the debate by introducing new approaches to studying the phenomenon of presidential interruptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constitutional provisions regarding presidential re-election have been modified in several Latin American countries in recent years. In some countries, these changes put the existence of democracy at risk. This article uses the principal-agent approach to analyze the role of the constitutional judge in presidential re-election as an accountability mechanism. It finds that immediate reelection in democracies of strong presidentialism can be a perverse mechanism that sharpens the concentration of power and deteriorates the welfare of the citizens instead of making politicians accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Diffusion theories have paid little attention to the dissemination of political institutions, so far. Moreover, they have offered better explanations of processes of adoption than adaptation ones. The creation of political institutions in Latin America after the wars of independence provides an excellent opportunity for theory-building while correcting these biases. The USA presidential model was adopted by Latin American countries during the xix century, but with certain adaptations, in the sense that the "copies" had fundamental differences from the original paradigm. Latin American presidentialism grants the president a significantly greater role in the dynamics of government than the American one. Ideational factors explain not only the initial choice for presidentialism; but they also contribute to explaining the meaning and intensity of the deep mutation experienced by the Philadelphia model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a new typology for examining presidentialism, in which the interaction between the political dimension (institutional and partisan presidential powers) and contextual dimension (the state of the economy and presidential approval) determine both the intensity of presidentialism and the type of political and social relationships derived from it. Looking at empirical evidence from eighteen Latin American countries, the article identifies four ideal types of presidentialism: imperial, conditioned, minimal, and transitional. Venezuela and Ecuador are empirical cases of imperial presidentialism while Honduras and Paraguay are on the threshold between conditioned presidentialism, and minimal presidentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mainstream literature in political science confers to institutions a key role in the formation, performance and fall of governments. In the meantime, studies on coalition theories did not, in their majority, escape from this neo-institutionalist approach. Based on the late Mexican constitutional reform which made the formation of coalition governments in the country possible, we shall compile and test most of the arguments on the institutional impacts on coalitions, and test them through the Latin American experiments, using a configurational comparative approach (QCA). As a result, we expect to add nuance to most of the neo-institutionalist arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a significant trend in Latin America of extending term limits for the presidency in order to allow reelection. There is also evidence that incumbency advantage matters of those presidents seeking reelection in different countries tipically win their electoral bids. Based on a dataset of 137 elections in 18 countries in Latina America, this paper describes the evolution of different reelection schemes since the transition to democracy, reports the success rates for presidential incumbents and estimates the impact of incumbency on electoral margins controlling for institutional and economic variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue including the legislative politics, English book that influenced the legislative studies development, and the executive-legislative relations in Latin America.

Copyright of Estudios Sociológicos is the property of El Colegio de Mexico AC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The state of democracy in Venezuela combines relatively fair, free, and electoral procedures but with distinct authoritarian features: the lack of autonomy in the Judicial and Legislative powers vis-à-vis an Executive with extraordinary attributions; the development of complex dynamics of centralization of power by the President; the free access to oil revenues by the federal government; the absence of an independent and impartial press and the loss of transparency in the government, among others. Moreover, the abnormalities in the 2009 referendum (that has allowed the emergence of the only presidential system in the region without term limits) suggest that even electoral democracy is being undermined in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This overview finds evidence for concern about the ability of the governments in Colombia and Venezuela to hold free and fair elections and a trend toward the concentration of executive power in most countries in the sub-region. The separation of powers has been most sharply eroded in Venezuela; but Bolivia and Ecuador are moving in a similar direction. Colombia has a robust constitutional order, including a remarkably independent judiciary which has resisted the concentration of executive power by refusing to let the president stand for a third term. at the same time, most Andean countries are experimenting with new mechanisms of participation. There are sharp contrasts between the model of participation in Bolivia and Venezuela, two countries often lumped together by observers; and, despite ideological differences, striking similarities in the presidential styles of Presidents Uribe and Chávez. Among Andean nations, only Chile is not undergoing a revolution in participation. Finally, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador have re-written their constitutions in an attempt to encourage the exercise of constituent power. These cases exhibit variation in terms of the degree to which deliberative, pluralistic, lawful, and constitutional procedures were used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Derecho del Estado is the property of Universidad Externado de Colombia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Journal of Politics in Latin America is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Much of the recent analysis of presidentialism has been based on the assumption that executive-legislative confrontation creates simultaneous conditions for policy stability and regime breakdown. In the first section of the paper, I show that there is an inherent logical tension between these two predictions and that they rely on contradictory assumptions. In the second section, I develop a model of executive-legislative deadlock and argue that regime instability is more likely when partisan players are unilaterally impatient, when institutional design is biased in favor of one party, and when the number of parties is greater. In the third section, I test the predictions of the model using time-series cross-section data for 19 presidential countries in the Western Hemisphere between 1950 and 2000. Finally, I discuss how this approach illuminates some empirical puzzles like the historical survival of American presidentialism and the lower levels of regime instability created by executive-legislative deadlock in Latin America in the 1990s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]