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Democratization and Constitutional Crises in Presidential Regimes

Toward Congressional Supremacy?

University of Pittsburgh

This article explores the impact of democratization on the resolution of executive-legislative crises in Latin American presidential regimes. The author studies 27 episodes in which the executive branch closed the legislature or the legislature removed the chief executive from office between 1950 and 2000. It is hypothesized that the democratization of Latin American presidential systems has hindered the ability of presidents to challenge the legislature and encouraged the emergence of congressional supremacy (i.e., the capacity of congress to impeach the president if a serious conflict emerges). Three causal mechanisms account for this outcome: (a) a lower likelihood of military intervention, (b) the elimination of constitutional tools used by authoritarian presidents to dissolve congress, and (c) greater stability in the constitutional environment. After discussing the limitations of conventional maximum likelihood tests, the author assesses this hypothesis using a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative model.

Key Words: democratization • Latin America • presidential crises • comparative method • fuzzy sets

Comparative Political Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1, 51-74 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0010414004270888


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