https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4727-3092
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ABSTRACT
The legislative success of a president is normally measured with respect to president-initiated bills. However, when they control the legislative agenda, presidents can also prioritize legislator-initiated bills and take credit for their passage. We contend that presidential legislative success should be measured with respect to both types of bills. With data on the 10301 bills introduced in Chile (1990–2018), we analyze the determinants of success of the 2640 presidential priority bills (PPB) – president-initiated bills and legislator-initiated bills that received a presidential priority motion to speed up debate. Reforms that strengthened the legislature have induced the executive to prioritize more legislator-initiated bills. PPB introduced in the first year of the term are more likely to pass while those introduced after the 2005 reforms and in the last year of the term are less likely to pass. Presidential approval, majority support in congress and Finance or Constitution Committee referrals are not good predictors of the success of PPB. The determinants better explain the passage of president-initiated bills than the passage of legislator-initiated bills.
Acknowledgments
Both authors acknowledge funding from the National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development (grant # 1200317) and by the Millenium Nucleus Center for the Study of Politics, Public Opinion and Media in Chile [grant number NCS2021_063]. Replicability: The data used in the paper is of public access, but the dataset used for the paper will be available in Harvard Dataverse for replication purposes.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
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Jhon Jaime-Godoy
Jhon Jaime-Godoy is a political scientist and a research associate at the Political Electoral Observatory at Universidad Diego Portales. He is also a consultant on public opinion and electoral preferences in Chile.
Patricio Navia
Patricio Navia is a Professor of Political Science at Universidad Diego Portales in Chile and a Clinical Professor of Liberal Studies at New York University. He has written extensively on elections, legislative affairs and democratization in Chile.