Shifting Constitutional Designs in Latin America: A Two-Level Explanation , Texas Law Review , 2011, (89, 7) 1777-1805. (original) (raw)
Related papers
The formulas for electing presidents and the rules determining the legislative powers of presidents are important variables for explaining the performance of presidential democracies. This article develops a strategic choice model to explain variations in these institutional features. Based on this model, it is proposed here that constitution makers are likely to opt for more-than-plurality rules of presidential elections when the number of parties necessary to pass constitutional changes increases. It is also proposed that the makers of constitutions are likely to strengthen the legislative powers of the president when the number of parties necessary to pass constitutional changes increases and when parties are decentralized. The argument is supported by a statistical analysis of the determinants of constitutional choice in Latin America.
Constitutional Design and Democratic Performance in Latin America
Verfassung in Recht und Übersee, 2005
*This paper is a part of a much larger project on the institutional and political foundations of regime performance in Latin America. I presented an earlier version of this paper as the "Herbert-Krüger-Gedächtnis-Vorlesung" at the "Arbeitskreis für Überseeische Verfassungsvergleichung", held in Mainz on 25-6 June 2005. I thank conference organizers for their kind invitation and thank working group members for their comments. I also acknowledge the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for support and the Institut für Iberoamerika Kunde in Hamburg, Germany, for its hospitality during the 2004-5 academic year. I thank Gabriel Negretto for his remarks on an earlier version. Comments are welcomed.
Coalition Size and Constitutional Choice in Latin America - Working Paper
The agenda powers are one of the main instruments of the control of the legislative process in democratic systems. The paper presents an analysis of the determinants of the choice of the agenda powers in Latin America presidential regimes. The paper investigates the determinants of the institutional choices of these powers in the region, considered itself as endogenous choices. The statistical tests are looking for new possible scenarios where the makers of new constitutions, and broad constitutional reforms, are likely to provide different sets of agenda powers for the Executive. The statistical analysis of the paper will replicate some of the main arguments of the literature about strategic choices over institutional features, that is, the number of parties necessary to change the constitution, and the level of decentralization of the parties (Negretto, 2008). The findings suggest that the choices of key aspects of the control of the agenda are based on the influence of the coalition partners and on the share of seats of the incumbent's president party.
Law & Society Review, 2012
Since 1978, all countries in Latin America have either replaced or amended their constitutions. What explains the choice between these two substantively different means of constitutional transformation? This article argues that constitutions are replaced when they fail to work as governance structures or when their design prevents competing political interests from accommodating to changing environments. According to this perspective, constitutions are likely to be replaced when constitutional crises are frequent, when political actors lack the capacity to implement changes by means of amendments or judicial interpretation, or when the constitutional regime has a power-concentrating design. It is further argued that the frequency of amendments depends both on the length and detail of the constitution and on the interaction between the rigidity of the amendment procedure and the fragmentation of the party system. The article provides statistical evidence to support these arguments and discusses the normative implications of the analysis.
Constitution-Building Processes in Latin America
2018
This report seeks to describe and analyse key features of constitution-building and reform processes in 18 Latin American countries during the period 1978-2012. The report, written by Gabriel Negretto, consists of four chapters covering constitution-making procedures, executive powers, citizen rights and constitutional justice, and participatory institutions. Each chapter was originally conceived as a discussion paper for participants in an international seminar, entitled 'Constitution-Building Processes in Latin America', held on 21-22 October 2015 in Santiago de Chile. The seminar was organized by the General Secretariat of the Presidency of Chile, International IDEA and the University of Chile Law School. The chapters take a comparative approach to constitution-building experiences in Latin America, with the central objective of informing deliberations on the creation of a new constitution in Chile. The Annex contains a concluding essay, authored by Javier Couso, which builds on the topics discussed in this report to analyse the constituent process currently underway in Chile. The Chilean case serves as a reminder that constitution-building processes are deeply political affairs, in which correlations of power, strategic behaviour, and even sheer luck, play important roles. Thanks to Sumit Bisarya for his comments and suggestions during the writing of this work, and to the participants at the seminar for their feedback on the different papers distributed for discussion. Thanks also to the International IDEA Publications team for their support in the editing of the text.
Enacting Constitutionalism: The Origins of Independent Judicial Institutions in Latin America
When and why can constitution-making processes be expected to produce an institutional framework that formally serves constitutionalism? Based on a simple and general typology of constituent processes that captures their legal/political character and dynamic nature, constitution-making processes controlled by one cohesive and organized political group (unilateral) can be distinguished from processes controlled by at least two different political groups (multilateral). A sample of eighteen Latin American countries from 1945 to 2005 shows that multilateral constitution making tends to establish institutional frameworks consistent with constitutionalism.
Constitutional Design and Democratic Performance
Democratization, 2002
*This paper is a part of a much larger project on the institutional and political foundations of regime performance in Latin America. I presented an earlier version of this paper as the "Herbert-Krüger-Gedächtnis-Vorlesung" at the "Arbeitskreis für Überseeische Verfassungsvergleichung", held in Mainz on 25-6 June 2005. I thank conference organizers for their kind invitation and thank working group members for their comments. I also acknowledge the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for support and the Institut für Iberoamerika Kunde in Hamburg, Germany, for its hospitality during the 2004-5 academic year. I thank Gabriel Negretto for his remarks on an earlier version. Comments are welcomed.
Constitutional Choice and Agenda Setting Powers in Latin America - Working Paper
The paper will look for new elements in the analysis of the strategic choices of the political parties over legislative agenda-setting powers of the Presidents in Constitutional Assemblies. Given some hypothesis about the partisan interest in moments of constitutional choice of multiparty presidential regimes, the paper tries to contribute with the analysis of the mechanisms of legislative delegation and bargaining in different coalitional structures of constitutional choice moments. I will argue that different distributions of institutional powers of the Presidents can be predicted from the characteristics of the size of the government coalition, and from the president"s party control of the floor in the Constitutional Assembly. The aim is to explore the influence of the share of legislative"s seats occupied by legislators supporting the president in the configuration of the government coalition, and the influence of the presidential party in the allocation of presidential prerogatives. Given the assumption that institutions usually "reflect the interests of those who devise them" (Geddes, 1995; p. 239), the paper is looking for a theory to explain institutional choices of the Constitutional Powers in Presidential regimes. I think it might be possible to test some of the mechanisms that creates incentives for the distribution of presidential powers by the implications of the same powers for the future bargaining process of Executive and Legislative in the ordinary legislative process. For example, Presidential agenda-setting powers are often considered not only an instrument of minority president, but also a form of bargaining of the president with the political parties in a majority coalition. I plan to test the argument against the literature"s emphasis on the incentives of the characteristics of the electoral systems and the structure of the party organization to explain different forms of institutional delegation. My argument is that the incentives of the strategic choice of distribution of legislative powers of the presidents can be better accessed when we consider the size of the coalition that supports the governments and the share of the party of the President at the constitutional change moment.