The Formation of Cabinet Coalitions in Presidential Systems

Abstract

Cabinet coalitions are central to the functioning of Latin American presidential systems. However, the reasons for their formation remain unclear. While recent studies suggest that presidents invite parties to the cabinet to facilitate governability and lawmaking, this study argues that the composition of cabinet coalitions is largely predetermined by commitments made before presidential elections. To analyze this argument, the study introduces the conditional logit model as a new empirical strategy for modeling cabinet choice under this type of regime. Based on a new dataset of 107 cabinets in 13 Latin American democracies, the study shows that pre‐electoral commitments strongly affect cabinet formation and thereby also confound the relationship between cabinet formation and governability.

How Valuable Is a Presidential Cabinet? Measuring Ministries’ Political Attractiveness in Brazil

“…2. Another point of view is offered by Freudenreich (2016), who argues that cabinet building has nothing to do with government-coalition dynamics but only with pre-electoral coalitional dynamics.…”

Reevaluating the presidential runoff rule: Does a provision promote the protection of human rights?

“…Next, although the conventional view has attributed cabinet composition in presidential systems to institutional characteristics, such as electoral rules, formal powers of the president, and party characteristics [15–17], Freudenreich ([18]: 80) “argues that the partisan composition of cabinets is largely predetermined by the bargaining and the competition before and during presidential elections.” Pérez-Liñán ([3]: 132) adds that a runoff rule encourages “the formation of inclusive electoral alliances before the second round—alliances that may easily become the basis for coalition governments.” As Linz ([19]: 57) explains,“run-off provisions…set up a confrontation between the two major candidates,” and as a result, “broad coalitions are likely to be formed…in preelection maneuvering.” This leads me to my fifth premise: a presidential runoff rule is unlikely to lead to a cabinet with a high percentage of individuals in the same party as the president.…”

Razões da Fragmentação: Coligações e Estratégias Partidárias na Presença de Eleições Majoritárias e Proporcionais Simultâneas

“…No exemplo apresentado no Quadro 1, conforme ficará evidente ao leitor atento, os partidos não formam coligações, concorrendo sempre de forma isolada, tanto na eleição presidencial quanto na eleição para deputado federal. Dado que a formação de coligações nas eleições para o Executivo é corriqueira em países presidencialistas multipartidários (Kellam, 2015b;West e Spoon, 2017;Freudenreich, 2016), os efeitos de coordenação eleitoral mostrados no quadro contam apenas parte da história.…”

“…Ao decidir apoiar um candidato à presidência de outro partido, os partidos coligados abrem mão da possibilidade de controlar a presidência, bem como da oportunidade de se beneficiar da exposição na mídia de um candidato presidencial próprio. A decisão de entrar em uma coligação também pode resultar na perda de credibilidade e de apoio eleitoral se a coligação for percebida como inadequada, por exemplo, em razão de divergências programáticas entre os parceiros da coalizão pré-eleitoral (West e Spoon, 2017;Freudenreich, 2016).…”