this article assesses the effect of changes in the lawmaking process on the success of the president's legislative agenda, distinguishing between within-term success (bills that passed during the term) and overall success (including bills that passed after the president left office). With the 2064 presidential bills introduced in seven terms in Chile's presidential system, we assess the impact of changes in lawmaking rules on within-term (59.9%) and overall success (70.6%). Changes that decrease attributions of the president and create more opportunities for executive-legislative bargaining-including concurrent elections-increase the chances of success of presidential bills. the use of presidential urgency motions, an agenda-setting tool, makes bills more likely to pass, but the issuance of many urgency motions undermines the bill's chances to succeed. Presidential bills introduced early in the term and those on issues where there is more policy convergence are more likely to pass.as the devil is in the details, the success of the president's legislative agenda should be impacted by changes in the rules of the lawmaking process. in countries where legislative rules rarely change, differences in how presidents use their toolbox of legislative powers explain legislative success. thus, "differences in uncertainty, not partisan support, drive the variations in chief executives' ability to enact policy changes through statute law" (saiegh 2011, 11). in turn, in places where legislative rules change all the time, the effect of specific changes is difficult to isolate. But in countries with more stable institutional design and party system, seemingly minor changes in lawmaking rules might impact the success of the

Resumen En este artículo se analiza la presencia de vínculos clientelares y patronazgo en Chile como método de movilización electoral. Para ello se han estudiado las 345 comunas de dicho país entre 2008 y 2012. Con datos de gasto en personal y de empleo municipal, se han evaluado las causas del patronazgo y sus efectos en la participación y desempeño electoral. De ese modo se ha concluido que los alcaldes de la Unión Demócrata Independiente (udi) tienen una mayor tasa de gasto en personal municipal, que los municipios controlados por el Partido Por la Democracia (ppd) tienen las mayores tasas de empleo municipal y que el empleo municipal se utiliza como estrategia de movilización electoral.

In some countries, bicameral discrepancies are solved by the formation of a conference committee. In Chile, conference committees are exclusively and automatically formed when the second chamber rejects a bill passed in the first chamber or when the first chamber rejects the modifications to its original bill made by the second chamber. This article postulates 4 hypotheses for the determinants of conference committee formation. It tests them for the case of Chile’s sequential legislative process (1990–2018) using 2,183 bills that reached the stage where a conference committee could be formed. The 482 conference committees that resulted were more likely to be formed when chambers were controlled by different majorities, when passage required special voting thresholds, when bills were more important for the president, and when the bills had more approved amendments, but they were not more likely if the bill was introduced by legislators rather than the executive.

This article examines the choices made by revising chambers in bicameral congresses. It analyses how bill characteristics, chamber congruence, impatience and institutional context influence the decisions made by revising chambers regarding executive bills sent by the chamber of origin. The analysis focuses on the case of Chile, a presidential country in which the executive has substantial proposal power. The findings show that the probability of a bill passing with amendments is higher when it receives a presidential urgency and when the revising chamber is the Senate. Executive bills coming out of the Finance Committee are more likely than others to pass unamended. However, those bills are more likely to die in committee when the revising chamber is the Senate (i.e. the chamber whose membership has a longer time horizon).

The issuance of parliamentary questions (PQ) in presidential democracies reflects an effort to connect with the electoral constituency to advance the legislator's career. We postulate six hypotheses on the association between party affiliation, career advancement and district-level incentives and the issuance of PQs in Chile's presidential multiparty democracy. We test them using a novel dataset containing 68,424 inquiries (oficios legislativos) issued by Chamber of Deputies legislators in three legislative terms (2006–2018). Though district-level variables play a role in the issuance of PQs, incentives of political ambition do not. As opposition coalition legislators make more use of PQs than ruling coalition legislators, there is preliminary evidence to associate PQs with a possible oversight role.