Matthew Soberg Shugart

Presidentialism and democracy in Latin America

This 1997 book addresses the current debate regarding the liabilities and merits of presidential government. Does presidentialism make it less likely that democratic governments will be able to manage political conflict? With the unprecedented wave of transitions to democracy since the 1970s, this question has been hotly contested in political and intellectual circles all over the globe. The contributors to this volume examine variations among different presidential systems and skeptically view claims that presidentialism has added significantly to the problems of democratic governance and stability.

The Electoral Cycle and Institutional Sources of Divided Presidential Government

Presidents often lack legislative majorities, but situations of opposition-party majorities (“divided government†) are much less common outside the United States. The presidents partys share of seats tends to increase in early-term elections but decline in later elections. Thus opposition majorities often result after midterm elections. Opposition majorities rarely occur in elections held concurrently with the presidential election but are more likely to do so if legislators enjoy electoral independence from their parties due to features of electoral laws.

Juan Linz, Presidentialism, and Democracy: A Critical Appraisal

This paper briefly reviews and critically assesses Juan Linz’s arguments about the perils of presidentialism. We largely agree with Linz that presidentialism as it is normally practiced is less likely than parliamentarism to sustain democratic government. Nevertheless, we introduce a number of caveats into the argument. Although we agree with most aspects of Linz’s four major criticisms of presidentialism, we disagree with one of them: we argue that presidentialism is less oriented towards winner-takes-all results than Westminster parliamentary systems. We also claim that presidentialism has some advantages that partially offset its drawbacks. These advantages can be maximized by paying careful attention to differences among presidential systems; we build a case for presidencies with weak legislative powers. Presidentialism also appears to be more viable with parties that are at least moderately disciplined, and it is especially problematic with highly fragmented multiparty systems and with congressional elections that occur more frequently than presidential elections. Finally, we argue that switching from presidentialism to parliamentarism could exacerbate problems of governability in countries with very undisciplined parties. All of these points suggest that even if Linz is largely correct in his argument that parliamentary government is more conducive to stable democracy, a great deal rests on what kind of parliamentarism and what kind of presidentialism are implemented.

Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America: Presidentialism and Democracy in Latin America: Rethinking the Terms of the Debate

In recent years, many scholars have argued that the presidential form of government has been a major contributor to the travails of democracy in Latin America. This argument has been widely accepted, and there are few published counterarguments. However, as we hope to make clear in this chapter, the evidence in favor of the antipresidentialist position is weaker than often assumed. The empirical argument against presidentialism is based mostly on the Latin American experience. The failure of presidential democracies in this part of the world has led many scholars to assert that parliamentary regimes would fare better. There are two difficulties with this argument: (1) presidential democracy has existed mostly in Latin America, making it hard to disentangle those obstacles to democracy in Latin America that stem from the regime type and those that stem from socioeconomic or other factors; and (2) parliamentary democracy exists almost exclusively in Europe or former British colonies, which should make us suspicious of arguments that parliamentarism would perform as well outside these settings. To be sure, critics of presidentialism and advocates of parliamentarism have not made their case entirely on empirical grounds; they have developed compelling logical defenses of their positions, too. However, as we hope show, equally compelling cases can be made in favor of presidentialism and against parliamentarism. Where does this leave us? We shall argue that it raises doubts about whether one regime type is clearly superior to the other.

Electoral “efficiency” and the move to mixed-member systems

Abstract All polities may be judged against an ideal of electoral “efficiency” defined as responsiveness to the collective-goods preferences of the majority of the electorate. An index of efficiency permits a visual representation of where any democratic system falls in each of two dimensions, interparty and intraparty. Deviation from the “efficient” ideal encourages politicians to cater to parochial interests at the expense of broad policy preferences. Recent electoral reforms in four countries (Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Venezuela) represent moves away from electoral systems that represented different extreme deviations from efficiency.

Presidentialism, Elections and Representation:

How does presidentialism affect various forms of representation? All else being equal, presidentialism is likely to impede the prospects for ‘mandate’ representation but enhance the prospects for ‘accountability’ representation. The degree of mandate or accountability representation is a function of the balance of powers and the degree of separation of purpose between the branches. Strong presidentialism works against mandate representation by freeing the president from his/her legislative copartisans and promoting ‘policy switching’. In contrast, a high ‘separation of purpose’, defined primarily by a country’s electoral institutions, clarifies for voters the responsibility of each branch for policy. Thus presidentialism - under certain common institutional configurations - provides accountability representation to a degree overlooked by existing research.

Plurality Versus Majority Election of Presidents A Proposal for a “Double Complement Rule”

Under plurality rule, presidents may be elected with narrow support whenever there are more than two “serious” candidates. Even under majority-runoff rules, the eventual winner may have received the backing of only a small minority in the first round. This article shows that majority runoff rules tend to be associated with an “effective” number of presidential candidates greater than three. The effective number for plurality is, on average, less; however, a nontrivial share of such elections have resulted in close multicandidate races. The article proposes an alternative “double complement rule,” which is derived as the arithmetic average of majority runoff and plurality criteria. This rule stipulates that a front-runner with less than a majority of the votes wins without need of a second round if the shortfall of the runner-up from a majority of votes is more than double the leading candidates shortfall from a majority. Possible effects and desirable conditions of this rule are assessed in light of the existing debate about electoral methods.

Comment on Gallagher's ‘proportionality, disproportionality and electoral systems’

Michael Gallagher, in a recent article published in this journal, argues against the notion that there is some single, obviously best standard of proportionality against which real-world PR methods can be judged. As he notes in his conclusion, all PR methods ‘set out to minimize disproportionality. They ditTer from each other not because some try harder than others, or because some are ‘fairer’ than others, but because they embody different ideas as to how disproportionality should be measured’ (p. 49). We certainly agree with this point; indeed, we have found it useful in structuring our own research agenda. But the conclusions we have drawn from it are somewhat different from those that Gallagher draws. Hence this note. Let us first recap the argument showing that there is no single notion of disproportionality against which real-world methods of PR can fairly be judged. The argument consists simply of pointing out two indisputable facts: first, that every method of PR currently in use minimizes some particular notion of disproportionality; second, that the notions of disproportionality inherent in the various PR methods differ. To illustrate the first point, one can do no better than recall the origin of the wellknown Sainte-Lagui? method of PR. Sainte-Laguti introduced his method in a French mathematical journal in 1910. If one reads his article (see Lijphart and Gibberd, 1977 for an English translation), one finds that Sainte-Lague proposes a mathematical index of disproportionality and that his method of PR is defined as the one that allocates seats in such a fashion as to minimize this index. In this regard, SainteLag& was not unusual. As he notes in his article, d’Hondt also had in mind a specific notion of disproportionality-which his method minimized. Even those PR methods whose inventors do not seem to have had the minimization of a measure of disproportionality explicitly in mind (for example, the largest remainders method invented by Alexander Hamilton) none the less all do minimize some such measure.

Constitutional Change in Colombia Policy Adjustment Through Institutional Reform

By the late 1980s the Colombian constitution had come under severe pressure for reform as the population shifted markedly from a rural to an urban majority. The president had repeatedly tried to provide policy to court the median Colombian voter, who was urban. The congress was strongly tied to rural interests. Congress consistently thwarted presidential efforts at policy reform. Different presidents again and again proposed constitutional reform as a way of achieving eventual policy aims, only to have the proposed reforms soundly rejected in the legislature. The Colombian congress solely possessed the authority to make constitutional revisions. This article tells the story of how this institutional impasse was overcome. In the wake of severe social strife and conflict a national referendum on constitutional reform was passed by popular vote and upheld by judicial action. This article argues that such constitutional conflict might only be overcome through extraconstitutional—although still democratic—means.

In the absence of vote pooling: Nomination and vote allocation errors in Colombia

Abstract Electoral systems vary in the degree to which candidates and parties may pool their votes to maximize seats won. The Japanese single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system allows no vote pooling. Hence parties may commit errors in nomination and vote allocation. List proportional representation (PR) also may limit the amount of vote pooling among lists. If a party is internally fragmented, as in Colombia, list PR may even resemble SNTV. Thus we can compare Colombian error rates to Japanese. The Colombian Liberal Party is less error-prone than the country-specific literature implies; however, the Colombian case suggests that an absence of vote pooling can be costly to parties even under PR systems.