DESIGNED TO FAIL: PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION AND PRESIDENTIALISM IN LATIN AMERICA

Operating under the assumption that proportional representation (PR) systems strengthen rather than undermine democracies, scholars have largely ignored the question of how this particular system interacts with presidentialism to shape stability outcomes. This thesis challenges that understanding. It argues that presidentialism, in interaction with PR for legislative elections, reduces coalition-formation incentives and makes inter-branch conflict in Latin American democracies more likely. Through a cross-regional comparative analysis and case studies on the Chilean and Venezuelan democratic experiences, this thesis shows that presidential systems experience higher levels of conflict when not subject to the systematic coalition incentives regularly produced by parliamentary or plurality-presidential systems. It also indicates that institutional factors can shape governing coalitions, independent of traditional political divides. Without electoral incentives to coalesce policy visions before elections or institutional mechanisms to ensure the formation of a majority coalition after the election, PR-presidential systems often create a multiparty result that is especially prone to inter-branch conflict and political crisis.
Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy
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