Most of the studies looking at executive strategies for extracting political support from Congress have generally assumed that the president is a unitary actor, with a defined set of constitutional or partisan tools to push his or her political agenda. Following the U.S. literature on the presidency however, there are good reasons to believe that the presidents'' choice of Chief negotiator, its political attributions, and the institutionalization of this role have a clear impact on the success of political negotiations with congress and the shape of its policy agenda. The paper develops an organizational approach to explore if/whether there are institutionalized procedures or structures in charge of dealing with Congress, how these negotiations are conducted, and what are the results of their interventions in comparative perspective.
