Oversized Government Coalitions in Latin America

Abstract

Research on executive-legislative relations in presidential systems have emphasized how presidents use cabinet appointments to form and manage government coalitions in the absence of majority legislative support. Yet not all coalitions are similar, as some are larger and, consequently, more prone to agency and coordination problems than others. But what shapes presidents' decision to include more parties in their coalitions? While several hypotheses exist in the literature, few have been tested in a systematic fashion, none focusing on why surplus coalitions form. This article intends to fill this gap by examining an original time-series cross-sectional dataset comprising 168 unique coalitions in all 18 Latin American presidential countries since 1979. In particular, I find that highly fragmented party systems and presidents with great legislative powers are more likely to generate oversized government coalitions. An additional analysis, with monthly data from Brazilian cabinets between 1989 and 2010, also shows that supermajority rules and bicameralism dynamics play a role in the occurrence of surplus coalitions, but party discipline and presidential approval do not.

How Do Minority Presidents Manage Multiparty Coalitions? Identifying and Analyzing the Payoffs to Coalition Parties in Presidential Systems

“…First, they can manipulate the size of their cabinets to manage coalition support. The likelihood that presidents will form minimum winning cabinet coalitions will depend on the reliability of the legislative support of their party allies, which is contingent upon factors like levels of party fragmentation, ideological division, and the electoral cycle (Altman 2000; Meireles 2016; Power 2010). The institutional capacity of minority presidents to bypass assemblies also affects the presidential calculus surrounding cabinet size.…”

“…The institutional capacity of minority presidents to bypass assemblies also affects the presidential calculus surrounding cabinet size. Factors like the magnitude of the president’s agenda-setting powers—for example, decree and veto powers (Amorim Neto 2006; Martinez-Gallardo 2012)—and the institutional constraints that presidents operate within, such as bicameralism and qualified majority rules (Alemán and Tsebelis 2011; Meireles 2016), are known to affect cabinet size.…”

Electoral incentives to coalition formation in multiparty presidential systems

“…To test these hypotheses we use an original dataset of coalition cabinets, originated at the pre-and/or postelectoral stages, from 18 Latin American countries. We built on replication datasets from Kellam (2015a) and Meireles (2016) to obtain information on variables of interest, including those about the partisan composition of presidential cabinets. We also rely on several other sources to learn about the partisan composition of PECs that supported elected presidents and the number of seats held by both the (victorious) pre-electoral and post-electoral coalitions.…”

The Presidential Logic of Government Formation in Latin American Democracies

“…Similar interpretations use this perspective to explain the formation of minority or majority governments (Figueiredo et al 2012;Meireles 2016), the government parties' preferences and the formulation of public policies (Alemán and Saiegh 2007;Altman and Castiglioni 2009), and the endurance of the cabinet (Deheza 1997;Altman 2000;Carlin et al 2014;Martínez-Gallardo and Schleiter 2014). Recent analyses consider the survival of ministers (Camerlo and Pérez-Liñan 2015), the development of the institutional presidency 2 (Inácio and Llanos 2016), and formal (Araújo et al 2016) or informal (Siavelis 2016) rules that affect the decision-making process in multiparty cabinets in Latin American democracies.…”