Political Sources of Legislative Delay in Coalitional Presidential Systems

• In Event: Executives in the Legislative Process

Abstract

Duration of the legislative process is one area in legislative research that has received insufficient attention. Processing of bills can accompany significant delays. What does a lapse of time in the legislative process represent? This paper highlights the importance of coalitions and presidents’ relationship with their legislative support base in explaining the speed of executive proposal deliberation in a legislature. We hypothesize that the duration of legislative processes increases when presidents’ relationships with their own legislative coalitions are challenged due to disproportional allocations of cabinet portfolios, the ideological distance between the presidents and their coalitions, and the internal heterogeneity of coalitions. We expect that these features characterizing president-coalition relationships have greater impact on legislative processes than those that embody government-opposition conflict.

The examination of a new dataset on executive proposals submitted to the Brazilian Congress and legislative activities suggests that much of the legislative delay can be attributed to political conflict related to presidential coalition management. More precisely, this study shows that greater ideological gaps between presidents and their coalitions and heterogeneous coalitions composed of many political parties make coalition management though the allocation of cabinet portfolios more difficult, leading to greater delays and lesser likelihoods of executive proposals’ passage in the first chamber. Although there is some evidence that the strength and ideological divergence of oppositions also affect legislative processes, the rapport between presidents and their legislative coalitions turn out to exert much more influence on legislative durations and outcomes.

The duration analysis also indicates that different policy areas induce different amounts of legislative activism. Issue areas that are traditionally regarded as the domain of the executive branch enjoy relatively swift approvals in the Chamber of Deputies. In contrast, the policy areas of great concern to legislators, such as political reform and social policy, exhibit protracted deliberation and lesser likelihood of approval. Finally, proposals for certain issue areas do not advance much simply because they are not deemed as important as other more substantive policy areas, thus causing neglect by legislators.

This study contributes to legislative research in several ways. The detailed analysis of duration and legislative activities in this paper provides a better understanding of what time means in the legislative process. By examining a hitherto untapped area with rich data, it can more appropriately identify causes of legislative gridlock than previously done. Finally, it offers valuable insights for other coalitional presidential democracies that are increasingly common today.

Authors

• Taeko Hiroi, The University of Texas at El Paso

• Lucio R. Renno