Presidential Vetoes in Latin American Constitutions
| Published date | 01 January 2006 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0951629806059598 |
| Author | Thomas Schwartz,Eduardo Alemán |
| Date | 01 January 2006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Journal of Theoretical Politics 18(1): 98–120 Copyright &2006 Sage Publications
DOI: 10.1177/0951629806059598 London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi
http://jtp.sagepub.com
PRESIDENTIAL VETOES IN LATIN AMERICAN
CONSTITUTIONS
Eduardo Alema
´n and Thomas Schwartz
ABSTRACT
A portrayal of the bill-to-law provisions of Latin American constitutions as
extensive game forms shows presidential veto powers to be richer, more
varied, and more regionally distinctive than hitherto appreciated. Small details
and apparent redundancies are surprisingly consequential, the distribution of
institutional advantages is both counterintuitive and incompatible with any
simple pattern or overall measure of ‘presidential power’, and regional peculia-
rities turn out to have been rather well designed to encourage democratic
responsibility and executive-legislative agreement more than executive domi-
nance or interbranch deadlock.
KEY WORDS .constitutions .executive veto .extensive game forms .para-
doxes .parliamentary procedures .presidential systems
1. Introduction
Famous for their long lists of presidential powers and their elaborate bill-to-
law procedures, the constitutions of Latin America all allow the President to
veto bills passed by Congress. Their veto clauses vary, however, in what they
say about override majorities, default options, presidential revisions, con-
gressional consent to those revisions, and the range of legislation that the
President may veto. How consequential are those clauses and the differences
between them? What advantages and disadvantages do they create for con-
stitutional officers and their constituents? And how, if at all, do they promote
or hamper democracy? To answer these questions we portray the veto clauses
of 18 Latin American constitutions, all but Cuba’s and Haiti’s, as extensive
game forms and assume perfect strategic behavior by President and Congress
– an idealization, of course, but the right one to begin analyzing the various
ways ambition is made to counteract ambition in Latin American constitu-
tions. One thing we find is that all the nominal differences are real: they
make a difference. Another is that all the veto clauses are surprisingly conse-
quential: they can change outcomes in unexpected, even paradoxical, ways.
A third is that the distribution of institutional advantages is both counter-
intuitive and incompatible with any simple pattern or overall measure of
presidential power. A fourth, more positive but no less surprising, is that
regional peculiarities are rather well designed to enhance democratic respon-
sibility and discourage interbranch deadlock.
The conventional impression, deemed too obvious to need any defense, is
that the veto is a presidential asset: its effect, when it has one, is to help the
President get his way. That is why it is commonly seen, not merely as an
obstacle to legislation, but as an executive check on the legislative branch
and as a means for balancing congressional localism with the wider interests
represented by the President. But our examination of constitutional game
forms shows that this impression is wrong: every version of the presidential
veto found in Latin America can be positively disadvantageous to the Presi-
dent and his electoral constituency. Sometimes the disadvantage is as wide-
spread as possible: the outcome is Pareto inefficient. Such anomalies occur
in rather common circumstances.
If these surprises took a bit of digging, another lies right on the textual sur-
face: in a region celebrated for its muscular presidentialism, it often takes
naught but a simple majority of legislators to override a veto. That is not
so surprising for constructive vetoes, which allow the President to revise
bills in some way: even a large majority might uphold a revision not pre-
viously on the congressional agenda. But in seven countries of Latin America
the simple-majority override also governs the absolute veto, the unqualified
rejection of a bill in favor of the status quo, and the conventional impression
is that this presidential power is thereby erased: its efficacy comes from
raising the hurdle for passage of legislation from a simple to a super majority.
Once again, however, a conventional impression is wrong: the absolute veto
can make a difference despite the simple-majority override, hence not only by
raising the hurdle for passage.
Veto paradoxes, or executive vetoes that hurt the executive, were dis-
covered by Schwartz (1999), but his examples are couched in terms of US
veto powers (found in federal and state constitutions) and Anglo-American
parliamentary procedure. Our examples are based instead on Latin American
vetoes and parliamentary procedure. We find a nice interplay between parlia-
mentary rules and constitutional bill-to-law provisions.
After listing the ingredients of Latin American veto clauses, we assemble
them in four extensive game forms, each portrayed as a tree, and add some
information about Latin American parliamentary procedure and some
assumptions about congressional preferences. The first thing we show is
that no two clauses are equivalent: all the formal differences make a difference.
Next we show how each game form is subject to the veto paradox, both with
and without super-majority override. We then use these findings to assess the
relative merits of the several institutional designs found in Latin America,
arguing that scholars have overlooked some regional peculiarities, their
consequences, and their considerable virtues, most likely by reading Latin
ALEMA
´N & SCHWARTZ: PRESIDENTIAL VETOES IN LATIN AMERICA 99
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