Electoral Laws and the Survival of Presidential Democracies

Abstract

This research addresses the conditions necessary for the survival of democratic presidential systems. It argues that it is presidential systems which consistently fail to provide the president with adequate legislative support that are inherently unstable and ineffective. It further argues that the electoral laws employed by democratic presidential systems are intricately linked to the longevity of democratic government in these systems. The dissertation has two interdependent parts. It first uses a review of the relevant literature, several case studies, and the results of a set of personal interviews to demonstrate the importance of an absolute legislative majority for the successful functioning of democratic presidential government. It then examines the relationship between four key electoral rules and the relative propensity of a system to provide the president with a legislative majority. Presidential systems which regularly provide the executive with adequate legislative support are likely to be far more effective and long lived than systems which generally deprive the president of a legislative majority. Presidential systems which over time provide the president with a majority or near-majority represent a viable form of democratic government; a realistic alternative to the parliamentary regime type. Conversely, presidential systems which generally deprive the president of a legislative majority represent a decidedly inferior and unstable form of democratic government. The success of democracy in nations which have a presidential form of government is strongly influenced by the specific electoral laws which they employ. This argument is supported by evidence from two separate populations: twenty Latin American democratic systems and twenty-three Argentine provincial electoral systems. The explanatory model includes four key components of a nation's electoral framework: the electoral formula used to elect the president, the electoral timing cycle for presidential and legislative elections, the effective magnitude for legislative elections, and the electoral formula employed to allocate legislative seats. The conclusion is that presidential systems with certain electoral law characteristics provide a viable form of democratic government, and therefore a realistic democratic alternative to a parliamentary system.

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