Presidentialism and its consequences: a debate

Abstract

In the last decade there has been a renewed interest on the development of political institutions and their consequences on different political processes. This interest reveals itself in a wide literature that falls into two broad categories. On the one hand, there are the writings of those that drawing from political economy traditions, from rational action theories and from a game theoretic framework set themselves the task of explaining how institutions develop, work and change, and how they affect the choices, behaviour and interactions of political actors. On the other hand, there are the political comparativists that have sought to explain the performance of different countries in relation to the institutional forms that polities adopt. This renewed interest seems to find its roots in two distinct developments, one theoretical, the other political. Regarding the first, it can be argued that social and economic centered theories which rendered political variables dependent and understandable only through social and economic factors gave way to paradigms in which the autonomy of the political was vindicated or, at least, put on the same foot as socio-economics factors. Consequently, the features and impact of political institutions and the way they shape life became a matter of debate.