The veto power in comparative perspective: a comparison between Venezuela and United States

This paper examines the Venezuelan Presidents’ legislative performance analyzing their veto power over legislation: the way in which presidents have used it during the 1958-1999, period of the Pact of Punto Fijo and the 1961 Constitution, and the 1999-2004 period of the Chavez Revolution and the 1999 Constitution, their ability to attach amendatory observations, how this power is constrained or expanded depending on the party composition of the government and the consequences of its use on the agenda setting. To better understand the developments in this field, the paper promotes a comparative research of veto incidence with legislative outcomes in this Latin American country and in the U.S. where the President has only block veto. Venezuela is the oldest existing democracy in South America that in the last decade has become one of the least stable and more polarized. It’s a presidential democracy with an institutionalized party system. The president, who is directly elected, is both the head of the state and head of the government and he or she does have an institutionalized role in the legislative process. The terms of the chief executive and of the assembly are fixed and not contingent on mutual circumstances. The elected executive names and directs the composition of the government, but a three-fifth majority in the Assembly can remove cabinet ministers. It’s in many ways a prototypical presidential system, but not in all of its aspects. Brewer-Carìas’ description of the Venezuelan system may best capture its mixed nature: “el sistema presidencial con sujeciòn parlamentaria” or “a presidential system subject to the parliament”. The ambiguity of this phrase reflects the complexity surrounding the president’s use of the offices constitutionally allocated powers. Even the comparative studies show a remarkable contradiction concerning the Venezuelan presidentialism, such as those by Shugart and Carey (1992) and Payne (2002), which argue that the Venezuelan president (before 1999 Constitution) had the weakest legislative powers of any president in the Latin American region, which is in contrast withthe majority of the literature focused on the Venezuelan political system which argues that Venezuela suffered from a significant degree of hyper-presidentialism, following the tradition of powerful caudillos that historically prevailed in the region (Coppedge, 1994, Crisp, 1997, Corrales, 2002). In this contest, the aforementioned comparison illuminates the theoretical reasons for rethinking the legislative effects of veto powers in these presidential democracies.