| In presidential regimes coalitions are not institutionally necessary given that the terms of the chief executive and assembly are fixed and not contingent on mutual confidence (governments do not fall by confidence votes). This combined with the presumed winner-take-all nature of the presidential system, produced a widespread belief that presidentialism is not conducive to political cooperation. However, there are cases of multiparty presidential regimes, such as Chile, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Uruguay, where real coalitions do form and last. Thus, the key aim of this enterprise is to provide a systematic, empirically oriented analysis to answer two questions: (a) Which are the factors that determine the formation of governing coalitions? (b) Once these coalitions are on the road, what should we expect about their maintenance in terms of party membership?;In order to answer the former questions, this research travels on two parallel avenues: the first consists in the intensive longitudinal analysis of a case study (Uruguay since 1942 up to 2000), and the second consists on a large-N comparative statistical analysis of all multiparty presidential regimes in Latin America. Nonetheless, because the study of executive coalitions under this type of regime is in an incipient state, this work borrows relevant insights from the study of coalition building under parliamentarian regimes. This does not mean, however, a strait-forward application of theories of coalition behavior under parliamentary regimes on presidential ones. It takes this theoretical and empirical traditions as a springboard for the building a specific theory of coalition formation and survival under presidential regimes.;Like parliamentary coalitions, presidential coalitions are powerfully determined by the ideological compatibility of the parties in the system. However, unlike parliamentary coalitions, presidential coalitions tend to form and dissolve in synchronization with the electoral calendar corresponding to the president's term of office. |
