Why Presidents Fail: Government (In)stability and Parties in Latin America

In 2019, Chile’s President Sebastián Piñera weathered the most violent social outburst since democracy was restored in 1990, while in 2021 President Iván Duque struggled to hold onto power beleaguered by massive street demonstrations in Colombia. Piñera and Duque have fared far better than other Latin American presidents, such as Pedro Castillo’s failed presidency in Peru (2021-2022). Since 1979 until the time of writing, a total of 23 Latin American chief executives had been forced out of office, whose successor has always been a civilian, and without a democratic breakdown. This phenomenon is known by the literature on government instability as “presidential failure.” The paper offers a theoretical and empirical approach to understanding how parties affect a president’s ability to stay in office. On the one hand, I propose and test an innovative hypothesis that suggests a non-linear relationship between party institutionalization and presidential survival: presidents who rule countries with moderately institutionalized parties are at a greater risk of early removal than presidents governing countries with weak and, especially, strong parties. Complementing this approach, the paper also focuses on the differences in strength between government and opposition parties. I explore these and other hypothesis by statistically analyzing 151 presidential spells and examining seven case studies.