Balance of legislatures in Chile. Presidentialism exaggerated or based on a cooperative political system?

Abstract

This article argues that the classification of presidential powers developed in the recent literature on Latin American legislatures does not allow to discriminate between legislative systems conducive to political cooperation and those in which the executive is able to modify the status quo unilaterally.The proposed framework of analysis responds to the paradox put forward by Siavelis (2002), in which Chile has moderate presidents notwithstanding having an exaggerated presidential system. The paper concludes that the constitutional powers of the Chilean president allow him to control the legislative agenda, but that he does not enjoy the authority to unilaterally change the status quo. Which, together with high supermajorities required for a considerable portion of the legislative space and the binomial electoral system, configure a cooperative legislative system.