Bras. Political Sci. Rev.2010;4(2):129-34.
Executive Cabinets and the Performance of Presidential Democracies in Latin America
DOI: 10.1590/1981-3877201000020006
The “third wave” of democratization in Latin America, starting with the Dominican Republic’s transition in 1978, was accompanied by a vigorous academic debate on the working of presidential systems. This debate started with an initial generation of studies framed by pessimistic argument on the perils of presidentialism, and was soon followed by a second generation of studies emphasising the diversity of institutional formats and party systems in presidentialist countries and, more importantly, how this diversity had a relevant impact on the performance of new Latin American democracies (; ).
With the turn of the century, a third generation of studies joined the fray. These studies depart from earlier ones in relation to two key issues, among others. The first is the way in which the idea of performance is addressed, shifting from the overwhelming emphasis on democratic stability to alternative dimensions such as government stability (), rule of law (), fiscal and budgetary policy (; ; ; ) or accountability (; ). The second point of departure is going beyond institutional and party system variations in order to deal with variations in presidential strategies for policy-making, which led to a debate about a neglected issue: the building of coalitions in presidential democracies (; ; ; ; ; ).
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