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A conference paper about democracy and defense policy in Brazil is presented which was prepared for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, from August 30-September 2, 2012. The paper discusses topics including goals of Brazil's foreign policy, Brazil's civilmilitary relations, and the role of the Brazilian legislature in defense issues.

The article analyzes the systems of government adopted in 1970s in Portuguese-speaking countries. It indicates that Portugal is cited because it was the first lusophone country to democratize and because its semi-presidential regime has been widely disseminated among its former colonies. It addresses whether there is a lusophone semi-presidential model and wow does semi-presidentialism works in those seven countries.

This article analyzes the policy-making role of Portugal's heads of state in 1976-2006. The relevance of such a research topic lies in the fact that not only is Portugal rarely studied in the English language comparative literature but also that there is not a consensus on the proper definition of the country's system of government, whether semi-presidential or parliamentary. Some influential studies downplay the president's role, thus arguing that Portugal should be considered a parliamentary system. In order to assess the working of Portugal's system of government, we present new data on the president's role in the following areas: cabinet appointment and dismissal, parliamentary dissolution, ministerial appointments, referral of legislative bills to judicial review, veto powers, and agenda-setting through going-public tactics. We conclude that the president's role in the policy process has never been rendered irrelevant. While the 1982 constitutional reform did eliminate the possibility of undisguised presidential government, presidents have continued to be important in policymaking, particularly due to use of their veto and dissolution powers. Therefore, we argue that Portugal has remained solidly semi-presidential. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the determinants of cabinet durability in 13 presidential democracies of the Americas. Based on the econometric analysis of 106 cabinets, this work indicates that durability is affected by the legislative status of the cabinet, the share of partisan ministers, the number of cabinet parties, and whether a legislative majority may censure ministers. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Europe is the heartland of parliamentary democracy, it has over the past century experienced an impressive increase in the number of presidential heads of state. And the new democratic regimes that have emerged in Europe since the mid-1970s have overwhelmingly adopted republican constitutions, and many of them feature popularly elected presidents, a regime type Duverger (1980) termed semi-presidential. The actual power of presidents in semi-presidential systems seems to vary considerably, both cross-nationally and over time. In this paper we examine the impact of popularly elected presidents on a critical and distinctive process in parliamentary democracy: the appointment of cabinet ministers. It is in the appointment of cabinet members that parliamentary systems most critically depart from presidential ones, and it is perhaps here that the role of political parties is most critical. Semi-presidentialism alters both of these features fundamentally and consequentially. We develop a game-theoretic model of cabinet appointment under semi-presidential government. This model identifies the conditions under which presidents can influence the policy process, specifically through their influence on the selection of cabinet members. We test the implications of our model against a sample of 134 cabinets representing 12 semi-presidential and 12 pure parliamentary regimes in the 1990s and find support for most of the predictions of the model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a simple theory to understand the relative incentives chief executives face to appoint partisans or non-partisans to cabinet ministries. In systems where the chief executive depends on a legislative majority for policy success, the chief executive must appoint partisans to the cabinet. In systems where the chief executive possesses independent powers and thus depends relatively less on a legislative majority for policy success, the chief executive has a wider range of cabinet appointment options available. We explore cabinet dynamics across all regime types: parliamentary monarchies and republics, semi-presidential systems, and presidential regimes. Our dependent variable is the share of non-partisans in the cabinet, and the key independent variable is the system of government (later iterations of this paper will add cabinet coalescence as a dependent variable). The four types of political regimes can be arrayed along a continuum from weakest to strongest head of state - from ceremonial monarchs to powerful presidents. As the head of state becomes stronger, he or she will possess greater autonomous powers - to appoint and dismiss ministers and bureaucrats, and to decree laws or other regulations - to make policy unilaterally. The more extensive are such powers, the lower partisanship in the cabinet. Our empirical analysis of 437 cabinets in 57 countries strongly confirms this argument. Our findings reveal that institutional format substantially differentiates the degree of partisanship in governments around the world. We then discuss how these differences are critical for understanding executive-legislative relations under different constitutional structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a decision-theoretic model to explain how cabinets help presidents implement their policy-making strategies. Presidents are assumed to have two key policy-making strategies available: to seek a statutory implementation of policy goals or a decree-based one. If the institutional and political incentives faced by the president favor a statutory strategy, he is more likely to select partisan ministers rather than non-partisans, distribute portfolios on a proportional basis, and appoint a majority cabinet. Econometric analysis of 106 cabinets appointed by 59 presidents in 13 countries of the Americas from the late 1970s to 2000 demonstrates that (1) the percent of non-partisan cabinet ministers is affected by the size of the president’s party, extremist presidents, the extension of the president’s veto and decree powers, the elapsing of the president’s term, and economic crises; (2) that proportionality in portfolio allocation is a function of the size of the president’s party, extremist presidents, and economic crises; and (3) that the key determinants of the legislative status of presidential cabinets are the size of the president’s party, extremist presidents, and economic crises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]