Party Organization and Lawmaking

This paper proposes that decision-making procedures within the ruling party can induce coordination between the president and congress. The literature on executive-legislative relations in presidential regimes is shifting its attention on how specific institutional features (e.g. Presidential Tools) can induce coordination between branches. One of these tools refers to the president's’ ability to use her party in the legislative arena. For example, there is important empirical evidence in the Latin American comparative literature that highlights the influence that ruling parties can have on the president’s legislative agenda: presidential parties can be a keystone for the approval of their legislative proposals or, when presidents lack of internal support, they contribute to the defeat of the president’s agenda. However, while the president’s extent of partisan strength is a key tool to understand her legislative fate, it is less clear how presidents acquire or craft influence within their own parties. What happens inside a political party in order to become an effective tool to secure legislative support for the president’s agenda? This paper answers this question considering the case of Rafael Correa (former Ecuadorian President) and his party, and shows how the ruling party’s organization became a key element for Correa’s legislative success. In particular, this paper traces a process of organizational changes within the ruling party that helped the President obtain more influence on internal policy discussions and decision-making. Ultimately, an increasing influence within the ruling party helped Correa push forward his agenda while keeping tight control over policy content. The changing organization of the ruling party provided rules and procedures that made executive-legislative coordination increasingly likely, even in the presence of intra-party policy differences. From a comparative perspective, this paper proposes that in addition to legislative prerogatives or other institutions, intra-party rules and procedures can also be influential for inter-branch coordination.