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This paper examines the impact of the form of government—presidential or parliamentary—on fiscal outcomes in democratic systems. Based on data for democracies in 98 countries between 1970 and 2002, it shows that the gross domestic product ratio of the central government budget balance is higher in presidential than in parliamentary democracies. It also shows that this impact is not due to the fact that presidential systems are not subject to the "costs of coalition" that allegedly afflict parliamentary democracies: the coalition and status of the government are of no consequence for budget balances in either presidential or parliamentary systems. Presidential systems matter for budget balances because they generate relatively high incentives for governments to keep budgets under control. They do so because in presidential systems, unlike in parliamentary systems, voters are by design able to identify and punish those responsible for economic policies. Presidents, however, vary in their capacity to affect budget policies. This paper demonstrates that presidential systems in which presidents are constitutionally able to dominate the budget process or to effectively veto legislation tend to have higher budget balances than those in which the budget process is dominated by the legislature or the president is unable to exercise existing veto powers.

What are the conditions that generate minority presidents, minority governments, and deadlock in presidential regimes? What is the impact of minority presidents, minority governments, and deadlock on the survival of these regimes? Based on data for all presidential democracies that existed between 1946 and 1996, the author shows (a) that characteristics of the electoral and party systems do affect the level of support for the president in congress and hence the probability of minority presidents and minority governments; (b) that these characteristics, and the minority governments they generate, do not make deadlock more likely; and (c) that minority presidents, minority governments, and deadlock do not affect the survival of presidential democracies. Together, these findings suggest that the view that explains the instability of presidential democracies in terms of the type of executive-legislative relations these regimes are likely to induce must be abandoned. The author offers two reasons, institutional in nature, that may account for the instability of presidential regimes.

Recent political and economic transformations in Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe have brought about a renewed interest in the incentives and capabilities of different types of political regimes to implement policies that are deemed necessary for economic development, in particular, policies aimed at increasing tax revenue. One central question is whether democracies can collect as much in taxes as dictatorships. This article addresses this question by examining whether regime type, classified as democracy or dictatorship, has a causal impact on a government's capacity to mobilize resources through taxation. On the basis of data gathered for 108 countries for the period between 1970 and 1990, the article concludes that observed differences across countries regarding the level of taxes collected by the government are not due to the fact that some are under a democracy and others under a dictatorship. Concerns about the inability of democratic regimes to collect taxes are, therefore, unfounded.

Open list proportional representation (PR) systems require that candidates seek personal votes in order to be successful. This feature of the system is considered to lead to intense competition among co-partisans and, ultimately, to weak electoral and legislative parties, narrow public policies, localism, clientelism, and corruption. We examine the distribution of personal votes among candidates from the same party for seven elections to the Brazilian national chamber of deputies (1990–2014). These elections are widely seen as hyper-competitive, particularly among candidates from the same list. Yet, the patterns in the data are not compatible with such a view. We find that the level of overall competition is considerably lower than the absolute number of parties and candidates competing would suggest. More significantly, we find that the number of viable candidates within party lists is limited and that their votes are distributed in such a way that indicates a contained competition among co-partisans during the election. These findings add to recent work that builds a more nuanced view of ballot structure, competition, and personalism.

Although often conceived as nonpartisan actors, presidents wield considerable political and institutional powers in parliamentary and semipresidential democracies. Do they interfere in the government-formation process in such a way as to change the outcome that parliamentary parties would have otherwise reached? We address this issue by examining the conditions under which the parties of presidents and prime ministers are the same in parliamentary and semipresidential democracies. We use data for twenty-one countries over the postwar period and find that when presidents are directly elected and are constitutionally empowered to nominate the prime minister, the two leaders tend to come from the same party. This, however, is only true when the bargaining environment within parliament is complex, that is, when there are multiple viable governing coalitions. In this sense, the distribution of forces within parliament is still the main factor determining the identity of the prime minister, even in the presence of strong presidents.

The view that multiparty elections in changing authoritarian regimes should be held sooner rather than later has been increasingly under attack. Critics argue that, under conditions of low institutional development, multiparty elections may lead to violence and civil war, rather than to the peaceful allocation of authority that everyone desires. Starting from the premise that elections are strategically timed and endogenous in transitioning authoritarian regimes, that is, more likely to be held when violence is imminent, we show that for Africa, the continent with the lowest levels of political institutionalization, elections do not increase the probability of a civil war initiation. In fact, for the post-Cold War period, the holding of multiparty elections is actually associated with a substantial reduction in the probability of civil war onset. To account for this pattern, we develop an informational theory of elections held under conditions that prevail in the post-Cold War, when foreign powers are reluctant to provide direct support for dictators (or their opponents) and elections are more reflective of the true level of a leader's strength. We argue that, under these conditions, elections may prevent the eruption of a civil war that is already imminent, through two mechanisms: they may deter a weak opposition from initiating a war they are likely to lose or they may induce a weak dictator to offer ways to share power with the opposition.

AbstractIn 1946 there were three democracies in the world with constitutions that, on the one hand, required the government to obtain the support of a legislative majority in order to come to and remain in power and, on the other hand, established a popularly elected president. In 2002, this number had grown to 25. Constitutions with this feature are often considered to be problematic, and, given the number of new democracies that have adopted them, have received considerable attention from political scientists. The primary concern has to do with the potential for conflict between the assembly supported government and the popularly elected president, which may lead to unstable governments, policy paralysis, and the eventual undermining of the democratic regime. Concern has also been raised regarding the negative role a popularly elected president may have on party development and the 'chain of delegation' that in a pure parliamentary democracy runs from voters to government through political parties. In this paper, we examine the effect the combination of assembly confidence with a popularly elected president has on government instability, accountability, legislative effectiveness, and democratic survival. We also examine the impact on these outcomes of different combinations of presidential powers. We find that the introduction of a popularly elected president in parliamentary constitutions is of little significant impact and that the preoccupation with the specific powers of the president is mostly overblown.