Presidents, Legislators, and Foreign Policy in Latin America

Abstract

Which factors determine legislative support for the foreign policy initiatives of Latin American presidents? How do political parties and politicians behave when dealing with presidential foreign policy? The issue of whether presidents exercise greater influence over foreign or domestic affairs has been extensively debated in recent years, and the evidence indicates that legislators do behave differently when dealing with foreign policy proposals. Building on this debate, we analyse legislative support for the foreign policies of 22 Latin-American presidents in eight countries from 1994 to 2014, using an original dataset in a quantile regression framework. We also use three selected cases to illustrate our evidence. Our findings are counter-intuitive and bring new elements into the debate about legislative behaviour towards foreign policy in presidential countries. Measures of a political party's ideology, the size of the governing coalition, and the effective number of parties (ENP) play important roles in levels of legislative support for presidential foreign policy agendas. Surprisingly, the popularity of presidents and the nature of their initiatives -high or low politics -do not affect these levels of support.

El Análisis de la Política Exterior en (y sobre) Brasil: hacia la consolidación del uso de teorías de medio alcance

“…En cuarto lugar, identificamos en la muestra una baja producción en estudios comparados: un total de siete Guimarães y Almeida, 2017;Ribeiro y Pinheiro, 2016;Milani, Pinheiro y Lima, 2017;. Como sabemos, los estudios comparados buscan explicar las diferencias o semejanzas entre los resultados objeto de la comparación, como por ejemplo el éxito o el fracaso de una iniciativa o política (variable dependiente) identificando los factores que llevan a esa variación…”

As teorias e o caso

“…Os resultados das pesquisas sobre a ideologia no eleitorado brasileiro não só reiteram a relativa homogeneidade em geral das posições daqueles que se situam em pontos distintos da escala ideológica (diversos) como também não encontra diferença significativa entre as posições dos petistas e antipetistas (PAIVA et al, 2016;RIBEIRO et al, 2016).…”

Domestic Contestation and Presidential Prerogative in Colombian Foreign Policy

“…In LAFPA, conversely, there are few studies of inter‐branch relations and those that exist underscore the weakness of domestic constraints (De Lima and Santos, ; Gardini, ). Ribeiro and Pinheiro (: 489) argue that foreign policy serves as ‘a vehicle for political parties to establish their ideological positions’ rather than to exercise a legislative veto on policy. Nor is there substantial, systematic attention to non‐legislative, domestic limitations.…”