John Polga-Hecimovich

Parliamentary Solutions to Presidential Crises in Ecuador

Over the past decade, Ecuador has witnessed growing social and economic unrest that has led to the ousting of three constitutionally elected presidents and generated severe political instability. Although Ecuadorian presidents are historically familiar with political instability and frequent regime change, the fundamental feature of contemporary political crises is that instability did not lead to regime breakdown (Perez-Linan 2007). What is more interesting is the fact that Congress played a critical role in the unfolding of all these crises: first, by endorsing widespread demands for presidential resignation from pressure groups including indigenous organizations, the military, citizens in general, and political parties themselves through a de facto “vote of no confidence”; and second, by appointing a successor to the president’s office.

Ni Chicha ni Limoná Party Nationalization in Pre- and Post-Authoritarian Chile

Chile’s parties have been characterized as ‘European’ in their development and institutionalization, but ‘Latin American’ in their high degree of political localism. Yet the specialized literature has not tested these tendencies nor developed a theory as to how they may coexist. Using the concept of party nationalization, we establish the veracity of the claims in the literature and propose a theory of static and dynamic nationalization development. We show that, as in Western European systems, Chile’s political parties exhibited progressive static nationalization until 1973. Since re-democratization, parties have demonstrated low levels of static nationalization, while the coalitions are highly nationalized. Concurrently, both parties and the coalitions have exhibited low levels of dynamic nationalization like parties throughout Latin America. We argue that these conflicting patterns are due to the interactive effect of functional cleavages and electoral institutions.

ECUADOR: ESTABILIDAD INSTITUCIONAL Y LA CONSOLIDACIÓN DE PODER DE RAFAEL CORREA

Resumen es: Despues de seis anos en el poder, 2012 marco el pinaculo de la acumulacion de poder politico para Rafael Correa. Ademas de una politica exterior asertiva...

Legislative Coalitions and Judicial Turnover under Political Uncertainty: The Case of Ecuador

While judicial turnover in Latin American high courts is often the result of political realignments within the executive branch, the judiciary may also be sensitive to realignments in the legislative branch. The authors use data from the Ecuadorian Constitutional Court to show that under some circumstances, congressional deputies will seek to remove judges further from their own ideal points as the composition of the legislative coalition changes. This provides some of the first empirical evidence of the role legislatures play in Latin American judicial instability and may be broadly generalizable to other countries with similar institutional profiles and rates of interbranch crisis.

Santiago Basabe Serrano (2011), Jueces sin toga: políticas judiciales y toma de decisiones en el Tribunal Constitucional del Ecuador (1999-2007). Quito: FLACSO Ecuador, 200 pp.

?Cual es el papel de las cortes en la politica latinoamericana? En la ultima decada se ha empezado a explorar esta pregunta en la Ciencia Politica, aunque falta mucho por desarrollar. En una revision de la literatura de la disciplina, Kapiszewski y Taylor (2008) hallan que la mayoria de publicaciones sobre las politicas judiciales en America Latina son narrativas historicas con una metodologia cualitativa que limita la replicabilidad de los resultados. Segun ellos, existe una escasez de investigacion cuantitativa que haga explicitos sus metodos y presente la posibilidad de aplicacion mas alla de los casos particulares. Por otra parte, encuentran que la mayoria de publicaciones se centra en solo cuatro paises: Argentina, Mexico, Brasil y Chile. El desafio para la disciplina, entonces, es producir un mejor entendimiento del papel politico de las cortes en la region mediante metodos cientificos rigurosos, sobre todo en los paises menos estudiados.