How Electoral Reforms in the Presidential System Are Made: Presidential Powers and Political Context

This study focuses on changes in the electoral system in presidential democracies and examines presidential involvement in such changes and the resulting outcomes. Since electoral systems affect the allocations of seats in the legislature, they tend to incentivize a president, who needs legislative support for effective governing, to influence electoral reform. I argue that the president’s political resources and context—presidential powers, forms of government, and public support—affect the process and outcomes of electoral reform. Specifically, I examine whether electoral reform occurs is influenced by the power resources that the president has and, second, if the reform does happen, what kinds of reforms occur and how they are shaped by the political context such as the forms of government or public support. The literature tends to focus on reforms in parliamentary systems, driven mainly by the parties. While parties are likely to be important actors in presidential systems, an executive who doesn't rely on the legislature's confidence represents an additional independent actor who wields important political powers. Moreover, according to Bormann and Golder’s dataset (2022), in parliamentary countries, there is reform about once every ten years, while it is about once every five years in presidential systems, which means that reforms in the presidential system are about twice as frequent as in parliamentary systems. Some presidential systems endow a president with more extraordinary powers, allowing her to pursue electoral reform more easily. For example, a strong veto can prevent any reform attempt unfavorable to the president’s party. Strong budgetary power can also threaten the legislators who need the expense for their districts, while strong referendum power with fewer restrictions can provide a way to circumvent the legislature. Genuinely, how the president's incentives to engage in reform depend on such powers. Specifically, while presidents need legislative majorities to advance their governing agenda, they often face legislative minorities. To overcome them, they may try to build and maintain coalitions while also attempting to engineer a more long-term solution via electoral reform. When the parties think the president has the means of engaging in electoral reform, they may comply more with the president's agenda. In sum, my theoretical analysis focuses on how the president’s political resources affect the bargaining between the president and the legislature and emphasizes that the effects on electoral reform are not necessarily monotonic. That is, weak presidents cannot enact electoral reform because they don’t have the resources to do so, while strong presidents will not need to, as they can use their resources to further their political agenda without the aid of reform. Thus, presidents with intermediate political resources will likely try to consolidate their political power via electoral reform. Considering that the slide towards more autocratic forms of government these days took place not by force but rather by subtle institutional reforms, the study of electoral reform is highly relevant. This study wants to place the study of electoral reform within the context of democratic development and help us understand a process that has undermined democracy in some countries.