Institutions and the Legislative Success of ‘Strong’ Presidents: An Analysis of Government Bills in Chile

Abstract

This paper examines the approval of government bills in Chile, evaluating the effect of presidential prerogatives and policy substance, and considering both bill-specific and contextual effects. The results show that presidential prerogatives over financial policy as well as the ability to affect the congressional agenda through urgent bill scheduling, significantly influence government bill approval. As expected, government success is enhanced during the honeymoon period. However, changes in public approval of the president do not appear to exert a significant effect on the passage of presidential bills.

Presidents, Legislators, and Foreign Policy in Latin America

“…Many scholars suggested that the combination of presidential regimes and multiparty systems would result in political instability, thereby impeding the continuity of the new democratic regimes (Mainwaring 1993;Stepan and Skach 1993). Although those pessimistic predictions were not realised (Pereira and Melo 2012), tensions between the executive and legislative branches of government remained central to analyses of Latin American presidential regimes (Alemán and Navia 2009). For this reason, studies of Latin American presidential institutions have focused on testing hypotheses that were first developed in the American literature and then adapted to the specificities of Latin American politics, especially the multiparty system.…”

“…The positive correlation between popular approval and legislative support has been observed in Brazil (Mainwaring 1997), Uruguay (Altman 2000), and Argentina (Calvo 2007), yet there is no consensus in the literature on this issue. Some studies show a null or negative effect (Fleisher et al 2000); for example, Alemán and Navia (2009) find no evidence of the impact of presidential popularity on legislative support in Chile. Although this study has a specific aim, namely to examine presidential success in foreign affairs, it may contribute to, and take advantage of, the emerging Latin American literature about legislative participation in and influence over the foreign policy decision-making process.…”

The Nationalization of Legislative Collaboration: Territory, Partisanship, and Policymaking in Argentina

“…Both in Chile and Brazil, for example, the executive has a direct hand on the legislative gates, resulting in nationalization of legislative behavior on critical issues such as budget, induced by the control of the agenda and the exclusive rights of a national authorities in key jurisdictions (Pereira and Mueller 2004;Alemán 2006;Alemán and Navia 2009).…”

“…We build upon a bourgeoning literature that in the past few years has sought to understand cosponsorship networks as expressions of public joint stances of policy preferences (Cranmer and Desmarais 2011;Alemán 2009;Alemán and Calvo 2013;Fowler 2006;Tam Cho and Fowler 2010). We consider cosponsorship networks as reflective of the policy intent of lawmakers, who connect with peers that share similar interests in policy areas or jurisdictions (Alemán and Calvo 2013); and measure the nationalization of legislators' policy intent as a function of the probability of coauthoring or cosponsoring legislation in Congress.…”

“…3 To measure the nationalization of legislative efforts among lawmakers we focus on the study of cosponsorship networks in Congress, responsible for the drafting and promotion of law initiatives. We focus on the decision to coauthor or cosponsor bills as an indicator of the coordination efforts legislators make while in office (Alemán 2009;Crisp, Kanthak, and Leijonhufvud 2004), and inquire into the territorial orientation of such collaborative efforts.…”