Separation of powers, opposition strength, and chief executives' strategy

Abstract

One of the main questions about presidential democracies is to what extent the legislature influences executive governance. However, less well-known in this literature is the influence of opposition parties in policy-making and government formation processes. We argue that, in multiparty presidential governments, more concentrated opposition forces in the legislature, as opposed to more fragmented, lead to higher government spending and greater chances of coalition formation. Facing more united opposition, presidents who are concerned about passing their agenda in the legislature are willing to pay the price to hold their ruling party or governing coalition together in tighter unity. We test this logic by analyzing data on government spending and cabinet formation in all multiparty presidential democracies in East and Southeast Asia and find strong support for it, controlling for several political and economic variables. Our analysis further shows that chief executives' electoral incentives strongly shape their budget spending and cabinet appointments. | INTRODUCTIONIn recent years, there has been a growing interest in how multiparty presidential regimes operate. Once considered to be exceptionally fragile due to inherent inter-branch tensions (e.g.,

Agency Heads’ Public Profiles and Bureaucratic Performance

“…We find that agencies have a higher hazard rate (i.e., probability of improvement), (1) when their ministers are appointed at the beginning of the president’s term than later; (2) when their ministers’ tenure ends at the time of a government termination than when the agency heads are replaced between government terminations. Existing research on ministerial appointments and dismissals suggests that contextual factors strongly shape such decisions by chief executives (Lee, 2018a; Lee & Magyar, 2022), which in turn may affect the performance of government agencies. The findings concerning minister replacement and government termination also indicate that a large number of ministers tend to lose their posts in the middle of the chief executive’s term, and given performance gaps in agencies headed by such ministers vis-à-vis those who finish their term with the government, the nature of government and minister terminations should be different (Lee & Schuler, 2020).…”

Navigating the Complexity of Administrative Actions: A Taxonomy and Legal Analysis

“…Each division has its own authorities and duties (Parker, 1957). But in recent years, the lines between the branches have been blurring (Lee & Magyar, 2023). This means that each branch is doing some of the work of the other branches.…”

Political Oppositions in Democratic and Authoritarian Regimes: A State-of-the-Field(s) Review

“…However, the published work available suggests that it might be very rewarding to invest more resources into unravelling the manifestations of party-political opposition under presidentialism, including the fundamentally different ways of individual administrations to dealing with opposition parties (see e.g. Ashindorbe 2022; Egar 2016; Lee and Magyar 2022; Mietzner 2016).…”