«The presidentialism in his labyrinth»: The majoritarian institutional preference in the Latin American parliamentary elite

Abstract

This work seeks to verify the existence of attitudinal characteristics in the Latin American parliamentary elite that are related to institutional preferences regarding the dynamics of the presidential form of government. It positions its object in the majoritarian institutional preference over the form of government of the Latin American parliamentary elite in the period 2006-‍2018 and seeks to answer what can explain that the members of a pluralistic representative body, such as Parliament, can lean towards a form of government that favors the president to the detriment of Congress. A logistical explanatory model is designed on this problem. The results show the relevance of the sociodemographic and institutional trust variables to conjugate the majority preference scheme, together with democratic stability and the government-opposition dimension. The study proposed allows promoting the empirical-attitudinal approach for the discussion of the hypotheses and postulates found in the classic debate on presidentialism in Latin America. This specific approach aims to advance on a relative gap in the specialized literature, about which the little that has been written concentrates on the descriptive sphere and studies focused on national cases. Thus, the study problem contributes to the most recent literature that considers the beliefs and values ​​of the elite as important variables in the configuration of democratic political systems in Latin America.