Presidential Powers in Latin America Beyond Constitutions

If constitutional powers of Latin American presidents have been studied extensively, there have been fewer attempts of conceptualizing and measuring these powers in combination with partisan sources and informal practices which also may be used by presidents to exert influence in Latin America. The article advances from previous attempts that have focused on constitutional powers in order to develop indices able to capture variation in presidential powers between one president to another in a specific country and within the same presidency, even if constitutional powers remain the same. The results also show that the factor that leads to the concentration of powers by the executive in Latin America is partisan powers. This finding contradicts an influential understanding in the literature that presidencies with more constitutional powers are more problematic for sustaining democracy. Keywords: Presidential Powers, Latin America, Constitutional Prerogatives, Partisan and Informal Sources, Power Concentration