The Survival of Presidential Governing Coalitions in Latin America

Abstract

The comparative studies about presidential coalitions have focused in the analysis of the institutional and political factors that affect the building of the government. Unfortunately, the survival of the coalitions has not been studied in depth. This article analyzes the government coalitions formed in five countries of the region since 1980 (Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Uruguay). The main hypothesis indicates that the survival of coalitions depends on the fixed presidential terms, the size of the coalitions, the number of coalition-members and the presence of some institutional rules like the magnitude of the districts. The evidence found confirms the hypothesis and open the debate about the strategies of building presidential coalitions.