Scott Mainwaring

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.

Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy The Difficult Combination

Starting from recent analyses that have argued that presidentialism is less favorable for building stable democracy than parliamentary systems, this article argues that the combination of a multiparty system and presidentialism is especially inimical to stable democracy. None of the worlds 31 stable (defined as those that have existed for at least 25 consecutive years) democracies has this institutional configuration, and only one historical example—Chile from 1933 to 1973—did so. There are three reasons why this institutional combination is problematic. First, multiparty presidentialism is especially likely to produce immobilizing executive/legislative deadlock, and such deadlock can destabilize democracy. Second, multipartism is more likely than bipartism to produce ideological polarization, thereby complicating problems often associated with presidentialism. Finally, the combination of presidentialism and multipartism is complicated by the difficulties of interparty coalition building in presidential democracies, with deleterious consequences for democratic stability.

Rethinking party systems in the third wave of democratization : the case of Brazil

Tables abbreviations of the main political parties, 1979-96 Part I. Rethinking Part systems Theory: 1. Introduction 2. Reexamining party systems theory in the third wave of democratisation Part II. The Brazilian Part Systems, Past and Present: 3. A legacy of party underdevelopment, 1822-1979 4. Elections, parties and society, 1979-96 5. Weak parties and autonomous politicians: party organisation in the catch-all parties 6. Patronage, clientelism, and patrimonialism Part III. Explaining Weak Party-System Institutionalisation: 7. Macrocomparative factors and post-1964 developments 8. Institutional rules and weak institutionalisation: incentives for legislators 9. Institutional rules and the party system: federalism, Malapportionment and presidentialism Part IV. The Party System, Economic Reform, and the Quality of Democracy: 10. Political institutions, state reform and economic stabilisation 11. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index.

Political Sequences and the Stabilization of Interparty Competition Electoral Volatility in Old and New Democracies

This article examines why some democracies and semi-democracies develop relatively stable party systems, while others continue to be roiled by high levels of electoral volatility. It is the first broadly cross-regional analysis of electoral volatility, and it is based on the most extensive data assembled on electoral volatility. Our most original finding is that competitive regimes inaugurated in earlier periods have much lower electoral volatility than regimes inaugurated more recently, even controlling for a variety of other factors that have been hypothesized to affect electoral volatility. Parties had very different functions according to when democracy was inaugurated, and these congenital differences had longterm effects on the stabilization of party competition. What matters for the stabilization of party competition is when democracy was born, not how old it is. Our results support social science approaches that emphasize historical sequences and path dependence.

THE NATIONALIZATION OF PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS: AN EMPIRICAL MEASURE AND AN APPLICATION TO THE AMERICAS

Political parties and party systems exhibit widely varying degrees of nationalization, that is the extent to which a party receives similar levels of electoral support throughout the country. The level of party nationalization has a prominent effect on such important factors as the survival of democracy, the types of issues that dominate political competition, legislative behaviour and public policy. In spite of its importance, party nationalization has been neglected in the comparative politics literature. Our article makes two contributions. First, it provides a measure of party and party system nationalization, based on the Gini coefficient, that is superior for comparative analysis to those employed to date. Second, it utilizes these measures to analyse nationalization in 17 democracies in the Americas, the first time nationalization has been examined empirically outside the advanced industrial democracies. The measure underscores the widely varying degrees in nationalization across party systems, within party systems over time, across parties within countries and within parties over time.

Classifying Political Regimes in Latin America, 1945-1999

This paper is about two related subjects: how to classify political regimes in general, and how Latin American regimes should be classified for the 1945-1999 period. We make five general claims about regime classification. First, regime classification should rest on sound concepts and definitions. Second, it should be based on explicit and sensible coding and aggregation rules. Third, it necessarily involves some subjective judgments. Fourth, the debate about dichotomous versus continuous measures of democracy creates a false dilemma. Neither democratic theory, nor coding requirements, nor the reality underlying democratic practice compel either a dichotomous or a continuous approach in all cases. Fifth, dichotomous measures of democracy fail to capture intermediate regime types, obscuring variation that is essential for studying political regimes. This general discussion provides the grounding for our trichotomous ordinal scale, which codes regimes as democratic, semi-democratic or authoritarian in nineteen Latin American countries from 1945 to 1999. Our trichotomous classification achieves greater differentiation than dichotomous classifications and yet avoids the need for massive information that a very fine grained measure would require.

Democratic accountability in Latin America

CONCEPTUAL AND THEORETICAL ISSUES LEGISLATURES, EXECUTIVES, AND OVERSIGHT AGENCIES THE JUDICIARY, THE PUBLIC PROSECUTION OFFICE, AND RULE OF LAW SOCIETAL ACCOUNTABILITY

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.

Politicians, Parties, and Electoral Systems: Brazil in Comparative Perspective

This paper looks at the political consequences and the political origins of the Brazilian electoral system. This system has several unusual features that grant politicians nonpareil autonomy with respect to their parties. These features include a system of proportional representation that uses an open list and a mechanism known as the candidato nato, which allows politicians to get on the ticket despite the opposition of the party leadership. As a result, the electoral system reinforces the individualistic behavior of politicians and has contributed to undermining efforts to build more effective parties. Notwithstanding their frequent laments about the weakness of parties, Brazilian politicians have consistently opted for electoral systems that undermine parties. They have done so because they perceived measures that could strengthen parties as authoritarian, and also in response to their fears that executives would otherwise be able to control them ruthlessly. The extreme party weakness and individualistic patterns of representation that are reinforced by this electoral system have sustained an elitist polity.

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.