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Coalition Erosion and Presidential Instability in Ecuador

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Andrés Mejía Acosta  and
John Polga-Hecimovich
Andrés Mejía Acosta
Affiliation:
Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. [email protected]
John Polga-Hecimovich
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh. [email protected]
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Abstract

This article advances the idea that coalition formation and maintenance in highly fragmented presidential regimes is not only crucial to overcoming policy deadlock, but in some cases, critical to ensuring government survival. To advance this argument, the article looks at the formation and demise of legislative coalitions in Ecuador between 1979 and 2006. The empirical data suggest that paradoxically, government coalitions became more difficult to sustain after the adoption of institutional reforms intended to strengthen the president's legislative powers. The adoption of those reforms, it is argued, undermined the legislative incentives to cooperate with the government and helped to accelerate coalition erosion. Not only did the reforms fail significantly to avoid policy deadlock, but in some cases they contributed to the early termination of presidential mandates. This article contributes to the study of coalition survival and how it is linked to policymaking.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , Summer 2011 , pp. 87 - 111
Copyright
Copyright © University of Miami 2011

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