Introduction Our objective is to report the results of an ongoing comparative research project that aims to investigate the institutional and political determinants of government performance in Latin America. Our dependent variable is the legislative success of the executive. Studies on government performance in parliamentary countries usually focus on the stability of the government measured by its duration. The literature on presidential performance, in turn, has turned its attention to the fate of bills sponsored by the government. These different […]

The 2002 elections were a watershed in Brazilian electoral history. Three aspects of the process in particular have been amply stressed in several analyses. The first is the symbolic dimension of Lula’s personal victory, the biography of a man of the people who rises to the country’s most important office. The second is the victory of PT, the main leftwing party in the country, winning federal office 22 years after being founded. The third is the dimension of the victory, […]

Introduction The online encyclopaedia Wikipedia defines “government coalition” as “ in which several parties cooperate. The usual reason given for this arrangement is that no party on its own can achieve a majority in the parliament.” (Emphasis added.) This commonsense view predominated until very recently in academic circles. Studies of government coalitions were limited to countries with parliamentary systems and the comparative literature assumed that presidents, because they have fixed terms that are independent from the legislature, would not have […]