The Balance of Powers and the Crisis of Governability: Towards a New Presidentialism?
The concept of presidential crisis can be utilized as an analytical category to assess conditions of governability. Latin American history exhibits many episodes of presidential crisis in which the Executive & Legislative branches of government are in such conflict that institutional paralysis &...
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| Published in: | Latin American research review Vol. 38; no. 3; pp. 149 - 164 |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Journal Article |
| Language: | Spanish |
| Published: |
01-01-2003
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Get full text |
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| Summary: | The concept of presidential crisis can be utilized as an analytical category to assess conditions of governability. Latin American history exhibits many episodes of presidential crisis in which the Executive & Legislative branches of government are in such conflict that institutional paralysis & political instability ensue. Analysis of 45 constitutional disputes dealing with conflict between the Executive & Legislative branches between 1950-2000 in 18 Latin American countries shows that although presidential crises have been present throughout the 50-year period, the destabilizing effect of the imbalance of powers on the regime in power declined significantly since the 1980s due to the effects of the third wave of democratization. In the new Latin American presidentialism beyond 1990, with less recourse to military action, the threat is not from the Legislature, but from rising popular dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy & the capacity of presidential crisis to destabilize whole governments remains. 3 Tables, 31 References. M. Pflum |
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| Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 content type line 23 ObjectType-Feature-2 |
| ISSN: | 0023-8791 |