Winning Coalitions in Presidential Systems: Pre-Electoral Alliances and Post-Electoral Governments in Latin America

This paper examines the electoral and governing strategies that presidents pursue in multiparty systems. The subfield of comparative presidentialism emphasizes the importance of multiparty coalitions for governability, yet previous research conceives of coalition formation as starting only after the president is elected. In this paper we extend—theoretically and empirically—the study of the coalition-building by linking the incentives of electoral competition to the formation and maintenance of governing coalitions. We argue that parties forming a coalition to support a single presidential candidate negotiate a common platform before the election, instead of campaigning to distinguish their policy programs from one another, and that these inter-party agreements lead to more equitable power-sharing arrangements among governing parties. We use data on electoral and governing coalitions in twelve Latin American countries between 1982 and 2011 to test our argument. In the analysis we account for important empirical variation in patterns of parties’ cabinet participation and in the proportionality of cabinet portfolio allocation. Our findings demonstrate a strong link between the strategies of electoral competition and the strategies of presidents in building their government and, ultimately, in governing.