Rethinking Presidentialism: Challenges and Presidential Falls in South AmericaAuthor(s): Kathryn HochstetlerReviewed work(s):Source: Comparative Politics, Vol. 38, No. 4 (Jul., 2006), pp. 401-418Published by: Ph.D. Program in Political Science of the City University of New YorkStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20434009 .Accessed: 16/07/2012 17:27

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Rethinking Presidentialism

Challenges and Presidential Falls in South America

Kathryn Hochstetler

Since the South American countries returned to civilian government in the 1970s and

1980s, twenty-three percent of their elected presidents have been forced to leave office before the end of their terms. This striking rate of early presidential exits has received

little systematic attention, although it should be central in debates about the quality of

democracy and possible instability in presidential systems. Why and how do South

Americans demand their presidents leave office early? Since 1978 the most serious challenges have come from civilian actors, in the legislature, on the streets, or both

together. The challenged presidents were more likely to be personally implicated in scandal, to pursue neoliberal policies, and to lack a congressional majority than their

unchallenged counterparts. The presence or absence of street protests then played a cen

tral role in determining which presidents actually fell.

Presidentialism and Presidential Fails

The contrast between presidential and parliamentary regimes is one of the fundamental

dichotomies of comparative democratic politics, with perennial debates about which is more stable or more democratic.' This article looks only at presidential regimes, since

its central dilemma of early ends to executive terms is only possible in presidentialism.

It departs from Sartori's classic definition that a regime is presidential "if and only if the

head of state i) results from popular election, ii) during his or her pre-established tenure

cannot be discharged by a parliamentary vote, and iii) heads or otherwise directs the

governments that he or she appoints."2 Linz points out two features that are common to

all presidential systems: a directly elected president enjoys individual democratic legiti

macy and is elected for a rigidly fixed term.3 These definitions form the consensual

foundation for most ensuing investigations of presidentialism and its effects.

In contradiction to these expectations, the regular emergence of challengers demand ing that presidents leave office early suggests that direct elections in South America do

not consistently give presidents legitimacy that lasts as long as it should. This study con

siders only presidents who were selected by a popular vote of their populations and thus

at one time possessed evidence of their individual electoral legitimacy to be the head of

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Comparative Politics July 2006

state and government. Of the forty such presidents whose terms were over by the end of

2003, sixteen of them (forty percent) faced challenges to their remaining in office for their full terms, and nine (twenty-three percent) of their "fixed" terms ended early (see

Table 1). Presidents in Ecuador and Bolivia have also fallen since 2003, and President

Chavez in Venezuela has narrowly survived challenges to his government. Given these

developments, it is obvious that South American presidents can not assume they will

hold a given and fixed term of office.

The term "presidential fall" is used here to identify all the times elected presidents

left office before their terms were completed, whether they resigned or were impeached or otherwise forced out of office. "Challenges" involve concrete action to convince the

president to resign or to force him out early. The various challenges and falls are consid

ered together on the theoretical ground that they are all equally deviations from the

expected fixed term of presidentialism. All these cases resulted in new civilian presidents in short order. Presidential falls as

discussed here are changes within the regime, not regime breakdowns. Uniformly, vice

presidents and legislative leaders took constitutional terms as presidents after presiden tial falls. Two challenges did include military protagonists Ecuador in 2000 and

Venezuela in 2002 but they also quickly resulted in civilian regimes. The civilian

nature of presidential falls is especially notable since noncivilian actors also ineffective ly threatened presidents during this time. Linz's expectation that the military would step

in as a moderating power to handle conflicts between the executive and legislature is

rather dramatically disproved.4 Consequently, the focus is on challenges to presidents from civilian actors, in the leg

islature or in civil society. Many studies of presidential falls in South America have

focused on elite negotiations that bring down presidents in one country, treating street

protests as background pressure on elites.5 Others, however, give central place to the

role of mass protest in a specific presidential fall.6 While these articles provide valuable

information about the unfolding of crisis moments, the study of presidential falls needs

to be advanced in two ways in order to understand the general phenomenon in South

America and perhaps beyond.

First, all of these studies suffer from the methodological error of selecting on the

dependent variable from the standpoint of understanding the causes of presidential falls.

They select cases because the presidents fell and lack corresponding cases where presi

dents remain in office whole terms despite efforts to throw them out. This article uses a

tool from studies of social movements, protest event analysis, to correct this method

ological problem. Protest event analysis uses media sources to document the occurrence

of unconventional forms of collective action as a first step in assessing the causes or

consequences of that action.7 This technique is used to document all of the sixteen times

since 1978 that South American mass publics or congressional elites have moved to

demand early ends to presidential terms (see Table 2). Most of the failed efforts are

largely forgotten since they did not succeed, but they are as crucial in understanding

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Kathryn Hochstetler

Table 1 Fates of Popularly Elected South American Presidents, 1978-2003

Country President Term Minority Scandal Neoliberal Outcome Argentina Alfonsin 1983-1989 Yes No No Resigned

Menem I 1989-1995 Yes No Yes Completed Menem II 1995-1999 Yes Yes Yes Completed De la Ria 1999-2001 Yes No Yes Resigned

Bolivia Paz Estenssoro 1985-1989 Yes No Yes Completed Paz Zamora 1989-1993 Yes Yes Yes Completed Sanchez de Lozada 1993-1997 Yes Yes Yes Completed Sanchez de Lozada 2002-2003 Yes No Yes Resigned

Brazil Collor de Mello 1990-1992 Yes Yes Yes Impeached; resigned; convicted Cardoso I 1995-1998 Yes No Yes Challenged; completed Cardoso II 1999-2002 Yes No Yes Challenged; completed

Chile Aylwin 1990-1994 Yes No Yes Completed Frei 1994-2000 Yes No Yes Completed

Colombia Turbay 1979-1982 No No No Completed Betancur 1982-1986 Yes No Yes Completed Barco 1986-1990 Yes No No Completed Gaviria 1990-1994 No No Yes Completed Samper 1994-1998 No Yes No Challenged; completed Pastrana 1998-2002 Yes Yes Yes Completed

Ecuador Febres Cordero 1984-1988 Yes No Yes Challenged; completed Borja 1988-1992 Yes No Yes Challenged; completed Durdn Ballen 1992-1996 Yes Yes Yes Completed Bucaram 1996-1997 Yes Yes Yes Voted "incapable" Mahuad 1998-2000 Yes Yes Yes Civil/military coup; voted

"desertion" Paraguay Rodriguez 1989-1993 No No Yes Completed

Wasmosy 1993-1998 Yes Yes Yes Challenged; completed Cubas 1998-1999 No Yes Yes Resigned facing impeachment

Peru Belainde 1980-1985 No No Yes Completed Garcia 1985-1990 No Yes No Completed Fujimori I 1990-1995 Yes No Yes Impeached; completed Fujimori II 1995-2000 No No Yes Completed Fujimori III 2000-2000 Yes Yes Yes Resigned, voted "incapable"

Uruguay Sanguinetti I 1985-1990 Yes No No Completed Lacalle 1990-1995 Yes No Yes Completed Sanguinetti II 1995-2000 Yes No Yes Completed

Venezuela Herrera Campins 1979-1984 Yes No No Completed Lusinchi 1984-1989 No No No Completed Perez 1989-1993 Yes Yes Yes Impeached; voted "desertion" Caldera 1994-1999 Yes No Yes Completed Chavez 1999-2000 Yes No No Completed

Note: This list does not include presidents whose terms ended early for reasons of illness or death, nor presidents whose terms had not ended by 2003. The text and notes in the section "Why Presidents are Challenged" explains how the cases were coded.

presidential falls as the successful ones. There are three inductively identified reasons

for challenges: the president's neoliberal economic policies, his personal involvement in

scandal, and his minority status. In all forty presidencies, each of these is a risk factor

for presidents who want to complete their terms, as challenged and fallen presidents dis

proportionately shared these characteristics compared to the full set of presidents.

Second, the presence or absence of street protests is central for the challenge out

comes. While both political elites and mass publics have tried to remove presidents

early, all successful mobilizations for presidential falls have included civil society actors

demanding in the streets that presidents go.8 As Table 2 shows with its empty quadrant,

all five efforts to remove presidents that took place exclusively in the legislature failed.

These observations suggest that street protest is decisive at least in the final stages of

presidential falls. Street protests by civil society actors, with or without parallel legisla

tive action, appear to be the poder moderador (moderating power) of the new civilian

regimes. They mark a reversal of earlier patterns, when the military played this role in

the region, with its interventions often triggered by mass street protests.

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Comparative Politics July 2006

Table 2 Civilian Challenges to Popularly Elected South American Presidents, 1978-2003

Location of action Street Street and Legislature Outcome legislature President fell 1989 Argentina 1992 Brazil

1999-2000 Ecuador 1992-93 Venezuela 2001 Argentina 1997 Ecuador 2003 Bolivia 1998-99 Paraguay

2000 Peru

President remained 1995 Brazil 1999 Brazil 1987 Ecuador in office 1991-92 Peru

1992 Ecuador 1994 Paraguay 1995-96 Colombia

The central role of mass protest in presidential falls suggests a need for further reflec

tion on the role of the public in presidentialism. Studies of democratic consolidation gen erally have been too quick to turn to institutions rather than state-society relations to

explain political outcomes.9 Studies of presidentialism have been as well, despite the fact

that one of the core features of presidential systems is the mandate the president receives

from the population in electoral form.10 Discussions of presidentalism have overlooked the ways that populations evidently can remove their mandate, a phenomenon that is

becoming more rather than less common further into democratic consolidation. Most studies of presidentialism have departed from Juan Linz's classic work compar

ing presidentialism and parliamnentarism. When Linz helped launch comparative study of these systems in the 1980s, he was right to argue that institutions had been understud

ied and needed to be given careful weight. 1 The ensuing institutional studies brought

many insights. Elite institutional factors are clearly central in routine politics (seventy

seven percent of recent presidents in South America did not fall) and numerous articles

continue to map out interesting areas of inquiry for this kind of politics. 12 For nonroutine

politics, however, institutional analyses are less helpful.l3 Society-based challenges to presidents present a dilemma for routine institutional analysis, playing havoc with what Barbara Geddes identifies as the two standard simplifying assumptions for understand

ing politics in democratic regimes: "first, that officials want to remain in office; second, that the best strategy for doing so is to give constituents what they want." 14 The explana

tions for extraordinary political outcomes such as presidential falls must include the public as an active participant, especially in resolving this contradiction.

Protest Event Analysis of Challenges to Presidents

Challenges are identified here through protest event analysis, which uses print media

sources to track protest event occurrences, using standardized coding procedures.15 The

challenge data presented here are based on twenty-five years of the newsletter Latin

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Kathryn Hochstetler

American Weekly Report (LAWR). The Weekly Report bills itself as providing "timely and concise risk-oriented briefing."'6 Thus, LAWR is very alert to protest events as well

as to unusual elite activities such as impeachment processes. Because of its weekly for

mat, it reports only the most important events, creating the usual event dataset biases

toward more dramatic events. Since the topic of interest here is efforts to overturn presi

dents, LAWR catches the relevant events.

One issue in protest event analysis is determination of what counts as protest or,

here, challenge. For civil society actors, this study focuses on reported mass mobiliza tions that put crowds in the street. 17 For congressional actions, it draws on reports of the

scheduling of formal impeachment proceedings or other concrete efforts to remove presidents. To determine whether a given protest or congressional action actually aimed to eject a president, the reported aim in LAWR is taken. LAWR always stated straightfor

wardly what the aim was, whether agrarian reform, higher wages, or, the demand of

interest here, the president's fall. Observers of protest marches of thousands of people

will understand that such characterizations inevitably brush over the different reasons

why individuals take to the streets, but there is usually a preponderance of evidence

about what brings the group together.

Why Presidents Are Challenged

What characteristics separate the challenged presidents from their regional counter

parts? An inductive assessment of the actual challenges shows that three themes moti

vated virtually all of the campaigns to remove presidents early. For civil society actors,

dissatisfaction with economic policies was the most common reason to challenge presi

dents. Accusations of corruption, when linked to the figure of the president himself,

were important to both sets of actors. Legislators who faced minority presidents also

used challenges to fight out interbranch relations following the many formal changes in

constitutions during this period. Predicted probabilities resulting from a logit model of

the dependent variables show that the presence or absence of scandal has the largest

impact on the probability of both a challenge to a president and a fall.

Economic Policies The regional spread of market-oriented policies during this time period generated intense political and economic conflicts.'8 While some welcomed

neoliberal policies, protests against them filled the streets of South American capitals

repeatedly. Most of these protests did not become protests against presidents remaining

in power. In all but two of the street-based challenging coalitions (Paraguay in 1998-99

and Peru in 2000) protest against the presidents' economic policies followed a charac

teristic pattern in which months of antieconomic protests suddenly exploded into insis

tence that the president must go. Thus seven months of continuous protests against De

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Comparative Politics July 2006

la Rua's economic policies in Argentina culminated in two weeks of calls for him to

leave before he resigned. Ten presidents following neoliberal policies were targeted by street-based challenges, while only one nonneoliberal president in the dataset (Alfonsin in Argentina in 1989) faced street challenges.

In these challenges, the scale of the demand appears to be related to the actors

involved. The street-based movements against presidents on economic grounds were most commonly organized by existing civil society organizations. Unions and students formed a core of all these mobilizations, with peak union organizations repeatedly in

the forefront. When protests involved only unions and students, they focused on more specific economic demands. Broader mobilizations that actually insisted presidents leave early always had additional participants, including individual citizens who were

moved to join. Additional organizations varied by country, but other common partici

pants were peasants, church organizations, and neighborhood groups. In Ecuador and

Bolivia indigenous groups have been central players, while Brazil and Venezuela some

times had professional associations. Business groups also supported all of the civil soci

ety mobilizations up to and including the effort to remove Bucaram in 1997; since then

they have only been a part of the challenges to Chavez in Venezuela.

Challenged presidents were far more likely to follow neoliberal economic policies

than security or populist policies by ten versus one.19 This disproportionate result is somewhat ameliorated by inclusion of the full set of presidents after 1978, as many

more presidents followed such policies. Of the thirty-one neoliberal presidents, fourteen were challenged (forty-five percent), and eight fell (thirty-one percent). These numbers are higher than the thirty-three percent of security-oriented presidents (three of nine)

who were challenged and the eleven percent (one) who fell, but many presidents sur

vived this risk factor. To complete the picture, there have also been antipresident

protests in the one country of the region that has most clearly broken with neoliberal

ism, Venezuela.

Corruption and Other Scandals Congresses and civil society actors often joined to

challenge presidents when there was good evidence of corruption or scandal that

involved the president himself. Congresses initiated numerous investigations in such cases, using the resources and procedures of their branch of government. For the most

part, legislators limited themselves to legal processes in their efforts to remove presi

dents for corruption, and citizens supported their efforts.

The formal impeachment process was the most common, initiated in nine of the

eleven legislative challenges to presidents and threatened many more times.20 Yet most

legislatures have and eventually used a variety of more or less constitutional removal

procedures in these cases. Only the near-textbook Brazilian impeachment in 1992 actu

ally went through all of the legal steps of impeachment, from investigation to impeach

ment by one body to a final judgment by another. In several cases, congresses eventual

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Kathryn Hochstetler

ly chose removal processes that did not require the supermajorities of impeachment,

removing presidents for desertion (Venezuela in 1993, Ecuador in 2000), mental inca pacity (Ecuador in 1997), and moral incapacity (Peru in 2000). The use of these kinds

of procedures may seem quite removed from impeachment, which is often considered a

special nonpartisan legal removal process for special presidential wrongdoing. However, impeachment has always been "fundamentally a political process from beginning to

end," making the distinctions among these kinds of removal less central.21 The Spanish

translation of impeachment, juicio politico (literally, political judgment), makes the word's double meaning clear. Juicio politico can mean either the constitutional instruc

tion that a political body, the legislature, judge the extraordinary case of legal removal

of a political figure or judgments that are politically motivated.

Both meanings are relevant to the recent legislative challenges to presidents in South America. The Brazilian impeachment of Collor in 1992 is the best example of a fully

constitutional process. The removal of Venezuela's Perez illustrates both meanings:

while he was appropriately impeached and removed from office for his shady use of a

$17 million slush fund, this impeachment was simply the last of five attempts made by a

hostile congress to remove him over an eighteen-month period. In addition, after Perez stepped down to wait for his trial, congress removed him permanently before it began,

on the questionable ground that he had abandoned his office.22

Citizens often staged demonstrations in support of these congressional efforts on corruption grounds. In the largest, millions of Brazilians insisted that Collor go. On the

basis of unsystematic evidence from the Weekly Reports, evidence of personal corrup

tion also seems to be related to low public opinion approval ratings, which contributed

to street protests. Only eight percent of Brazilians considered Collor's regime to be good as he began his year of decline, while the Venezuelan Perez dropped to the historic low

of six percent approval.23 Ecuador's Mahaud holds the bottom, with just two percent

approval ratings as he was being challenged.24 The quick impact of corruption on public

opinion can be seen in Peru, where Fujimori's approval rating dropped from forty-three to sixteen percent after a video showed clear corruption in his administration, despite

the Peruvian public's long willingness to accept his abuses of power.25 It is challenging for analysts and for South American citizens to assess the overall

incidence of corruption and scandal among the region's presidents. Accusations are

nearly constant, and court action against a president is neither necessary nor sufficient

to prove wrongdoing. The research strategy used here, which marks a president as per

sonally corrupt when the charges are credible enough to appear as the major news story

of the week in LMAWR, approximates the domestic level of belief that the president is cor

rupt.26 This belief, whether true or not, is the possible foundation of challenges. The absence of reported corruption does seem to shield presidents. Only eight of twenty-six

such presidents (thirty-one percent) were challenged, and only three presumably non

corrupt presidents actually fell.27 Conversely, while action against corrupt presidents is

sometimes swift, the larger set of cases shows that many presidents survive serious alle

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Comparative Politics July 2006

gations of personal corruption. Six of fourteen (forty-three percent) were not challenged at all during their terms, and only six were removed from office early.

Minority Presidents In legislatures, challenges were largely directed at minority pres idents. Fourteen minority and two majority presidents were challenged. Opposition leg islators were eager to bring corruption charges against presidents who were personally implicated, as just discussed. In the absence of such reports, they usually invoked some

kind of claim about unconstitutional presidential behavior with respect to congress or other institutions of government (Ecuador in 1987 and 1992; Peru in 1991-92; Paraguay

in 1998-99). Many of these challenges to minority presidents were clearly politically motivated. Ecuador provided several notable examples. An impeachment attempt in 1992, for example, was justified by congressional objections to a bill on monetary

reform and on Borja's reference to members of Congress as "layabouts."28 Ecuador's

presidents were also notably unrestrained in their dealings with congress. Febres Cordero, who faced down a removal effort in 1987, had his congress tear-gassed and

brought tanks to the court building to block several congressionally appointed judges.29

Publics were often indifferent to this kind of congressional challenge. A sharp rise in

public approval after Fujimori's coup in 1992 was the most striking example.30 The dis

banded congress' vote to impeach him was completely ignored. Paraguayans in 1999 did

agree that Cubas had overstepped the boundaries of constitutional behavior, especially

after the assassination of his vice president, and gathered "to protect the Congress build

ing".3'

Overall, presidents whose parties held a minority of congressional seats were more

likely both to be challenged by civilian actors and to fall.32 This relationship holds even

if the much larger number of minority presidents in the region is considered. Of the thir

ty-one minority presidents in this study, fourteen (forty-five percent) were challenged and eight (twenty-six percent) fell. Of the rarer nine majority presidents, only two

(twenty-two percent) were challenged, and only one (eleven-percent) fell. Fallen presi

dent Cubas in Paraguay was the only president challenged by his own party's legislators

from the outset, but the Colorado Party is so dominant there that politics often pits the

party against itself.33 The other challenge was to Samper in Colombia in 1995-96; his

party's majority control of congress and especially the investigative committee was cru

cial in his remaining in office.34 In addition, three ex-presidents who were eventually

tried for crimes committed during their presidencies-Garcia and Fujimori in Peru and

Lusinchi in Venezuela-may have been able to avoid formal challenges while in office

because they had congressional majorities. These experiences suggest that presidential challenge and fall are related to the majority or minority position of the president's party

in the legislature and support arguments about the problematic and unstable intersection

between presidential and multiparty systems.35 Nevertheless, it is not the only factor, as

some majority presidents were challenged, and many minority presidents were not. The

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Kathryn Hochstetler

only two countries that had no challenges to presidents, Uruguay and Chile, also had no

majority presidents.

Summary Neoliberal economic policies, personal corruption, and minority status all represent risk factors for South American presidents who want to complete their terms in office. Table 3 summarizes the predicted probabilities resulting from a logit model of the dependent variables, challenge and presidential fall, which were calculated using

CLARIFY36 Table 3 reports first differences in predicted probability on the dependent

variables, which are calculated by varying the variables of interest from zero to one

while holding the other independent variables at their modal values. The modal presi

dent in the region during these years was a minority president who followed neoliberal

economic policies and was not personally implicated in scandal. Such a president faced

a 38.6 percent predicted probability of being challenged and a 16.5 percent predicted

probability of falling.37 Presidents with a legislative majority or who did not follow

neoliberal policies could count on a small reduction in their risk of being challenged.

For presidents personally implicated in scandal, in contrast, the predicted probability of facing a challenge jumped to 63 percent (38.6 plus 24.4). Scandal also greatly increased

the predicted probability that a president would actually fall early, with the probability

climbing to 48.4 percent (16.5 plus 31.9). The other independent variables vary in the

predicted direction but do not have a large impact on the predicted probability of falls.

From Challenge to Fall: The Roles of Street Protest

As Table 2 indicates, the presence of a mobilized population demanding in the streets

that the president leave appears to be a crucial determinant of the success of challenges.

Legislators acting on their own were unable or unwilling to remove presidents. Street

protest accompanied legislative action and, increasingly, was a phenomenon on its own

in presidential falls.

Street Protests and Legislative Challenges Mass protest played a central role in the

outcomes of congressional challenges to presidents after 1978 in South America. As

these challenges unfolded, legislators appeared to calculate whether populations were more likely to punish them for action or inaction against presidents who at one point

commanded enough popular support to be elected to the highest office in the land.

Large-scale street protests clamoring for the removal of presidents persuaded legislators to act against them. Most important, they could move erstwhile supporters of the presi

dent into the opposition. The driving force of the fear of punishment from voters was

especially evident in Collor's impeachment in Brazil, where looming subnational elec

tions sealed his fate. Members of congress not only voted to impeach, but hurried to do

so before the election.38

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Institutional action or inaction can also shape whether or not the public moves. In the

same Brazilian case, a key supreme court vote required votes be made public, reducing

Collor's ability to buy secret support, and congressional investigations uncovered impor tant information that helped mobilize citizens.39 Other actors, such as the media, can play

the investigative role, but institutions retain key control over their own internal processes. In several other cases Venezuela in 1992-93, Ecuador in 1997, Paraguay in 1998-99,

and Peru in 2000-street mobilizations also pushed legislatures to take action against

presidents who had fairly clearly violated laws on the scale of the United States' language

of high crimes and misdemeanors. These examples illustrate the rise of meaningful politi

cal accountability that can restrain South America's historically over-strong presidents.

At the same time, some of the developments of this time period have primarily spot

lighted the ongoing weaknesses of democratic norms, constitutional language, and judi cial and investigative systems. In several cases where challenges failed Ecuador in

1987, Peru in 1991-92, and Paraguay in 1994-civil society failed to join the call to

remove presidents who had almost certainly engaged in illegal behavior. More than fifty

Colombian nongovernmental organizations put together a respected civil commission to

accompany the attempted impeachment of Samper in 1995-1996, and business leaders

tried to organize opposition, but they were unable to move people to the streets.40 In

this case, Samper's majority party was able to stifle a congressional investigation, and

the population never heard much of the evidence against him.4'

The final image that emerges from these challenges is of a dialectical interaction

between the challenges of legislatures and populations. This process could spiral into mutually reinforcing collaborative action that frequently was able to push presidents out

of power, especially in response to scandal. When legislative action found no popular

reaction, the challenge failed. In contrast, when popular outrage at presidents met no

institutional support, street-based challenges to presidents could continue on their own and often did so successfully.

Street-based Challenges to Presidents A second kind of challenge to presidents has

taken place largely in the streets, although it may include party allies in noninstitutional

roles. This kind of challenge shows little attention to constitutional procedures and is

settled through direct mediation between presidents and citizens. These challenges come from societies that are polarized against the state and result in academic studies

Table 3 Predicted Probabilities of Challenges and Falls

Challenge Fall Predicted probability of modal case 38.6 16.5 First differences in probability of a challenge varying:

Neoliberal -11.3 -1.0 Scandal 24.4 31.9

Minority -15.7 -5.0

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Kathryn Hochstetler

that are similarly polarized. They are polarized in part because these protests have been

driven largely by demands and accusations that do not clearly rise to the standard of

impeachable offenses. Unpopular and ineffective policies are not illegal. Street challenges to presidents provide some of the most striking images in recent

South American politics. Television channels have shown continuous coverage of large

crowds camped outside presidential palaces, demanding the president's resignation. Civil society challenges that were large enough to warrant notice in LAWR had at least

thousands of participants, and no president fell in response to street mobilizations of

less than 10,000. Yet some quite large mobilizations failed to remove presidents, although the largest failed protests were against Chaivez in Venezuela and may yet suc

ceed.42 The more consistent requirement was persistence. No single day's outburst of

protest persuaded a president to leave. Instead, protesters needed the conviction and

organization to press presidents for days in a row, or sometimes at intervals for months.

All the challenged presidents had time to respond by offering policy concessions or by

hardening their stances. Numerous presidents chose to defend their presidencies from what they considered

the blackmail of protesters. After minimal negotiations, they sent in police or even mili

tary forces to clear the streets. The prevalence of violence on both sides is an important

feature of these challenges and appears related to their success, negatively for presidents

and positively for protesters. Most of the millions of street protesters over the decades marched peacefully.

Nonetheless, incivility has been a regular part of civil society mobilizations, with most

including violent acts. Leaders of all kinds lost control of most of the protests at some

point. The Brazilian impeachment process stands out again as unusual, as it was the

only one of nine successful challenges to presidents that did not involve violence of any kind. Riots, looting, and arson marred nearly all the others. Roadblocks, not usually legal but not inherently violent, were also regular parts of protest mobilizations in

Argentina, Bolivia, and Ecuador. In several cases, violence went much further, as in the

use of nail bombs in Bolivia in 2003 that killed several soldiers.43 The short-lived coups

in Ecuador in 2000 and Venezuela in 2002 also were obvious peaks of unconstitutionali

ty, with some actors in civil society showing a worrisome willingness to jettison civility

altogether and to enlist military allies to push presidents out.

The violence of protesters does not exist in a vacuum. Incivility was inflamed by state

violence and repression. The levels of protester violence and the number of protesters

killed by security forces clearly were associated. So far, Brazil and Ecuador have had

unusually nonviolent challenges on the part of both protesters and security forces. During

five mobilizations for presidential falls in the two countries, street protesters were violent only in Ecuador in 1997, and that challenge also involved the only protester death. The

key role of security forces in determining levels of violence can be seen in the

Ecuadorian coup in 2000. It was bloodless in large part because soldiers actually encour

aged protesters to occupy the congressional building.44 At the other end of the spectrum,

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Argentina and Venezuela have had the most consistently deadly repression over this time

period, with twenty-five killed in the Argentine mobilizations against De la Rula and up

to forty-six reported dead following the Venezuelan civil/military coup attempt in 2002.45 Earlier street challenges in 1989 (Argentina) and 1992-93 (Venezuela) also involved numerous injuries to protesters and sixteen deaths in Venezuela. Venezuela and Paraguay

share the unhappy distinction of being the two locations where presidents' supporters and challengers clashed in the street, raising levels of violence in both. Paraguayan civil soci

ety's challenge to Cubas in 1999 would otherwise have probably been peaceful. The

largest number of deaths reported was in Bolivia in 2003, with as many as one hundred

killed.46 Only Chavez in Venezuela has survived a challenge in which security forces responded to protesters with significant use of force and numerous deaths.

Presidents' other option is to negotiate and offer policy concessions. Such negotia tions were difficult. Because of the amorphous nature of the street protests, presidents rarely found interlocutors who could guarantee their followers' response to particular offers. Consequently, negotiations often proceeded by trial and error and were rarely

successful. Cardoso in Brazil successfully made very minimal responses to the nonvio

lent protests against him and waited for them to fizzle. The most striking instance of

"negotiation" with the street came after De la Rua fell in Argentina, when protesters

also were able to reject his first real successor, Rodriguez Saa. In subsequent months,

many an economic policy was "openly assessed by the politicians in terms of its poten

tial to provoke a caceroleo [peaceful protest of banging pots and pans]."47

Parties and legislatures play one of two roles in these scenarios. Many traditional

parties seem to have concluded that their open support for street protests will under

mine the challenges. In 2002 Paraguayan Colorado politicians trying to remove

Cubas' replacement orchestrated protests that were purported to be by civil society

organizations, only to have those organizations expose the protesters as fakes.48

Similarly, while Peronist party members in Argentina openly took credit for neigh

borhood food riots, the Peronist leadership only secretly supported national chal

lenges to De la Rua and found itself also under attack from the streets after replacing

him.49 Nonetheless, street-based protests by civil society often crucially depended on legislative inaction for success, as was also true in Argentina.50 In Bolivia, as well,

Sanchez de Lozada reluctantly resigned only after his vice president and then parties

in his governing coalition indicated that they could not support him.5'

Street protesters often worked closely with new parties to which they had strong ties.

The earliest prototypes were the 1995 and 1999 challenges to Cardoso in Brazil, led by

the Workers' Party (PT) and Democratic Labor Party (PDT). Both of these parties have

ties to unions, and the PT has also had strong relationships with social movements.

These mobilizations with their strong party orientation were able to mobilize less than a

tenth of the participants of the cross-party mobilizations of 1992, however, and were

unsuccessful in their aim of presidential fall. Similarly, there are now parties or party

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equivalents in Ecuador and Bolivia that are linked to indigenous, union, and other civil

society organizations.52 They have been more successful. Despite the presence of politi cal parties and even some congressional representatives, party and electoral logics are

not dominant in most of these protests. None of the challenges took place in the final

year of a president's term. It is also worth noting that only three protest leaders

Gutierrez in Ecuador, Lula in Brazil, and Toledo in Peru-eventually became presi

dents, and all did so by standing in elections.

Street challenges are problematic for democracy because of the levels of protester

violence and the rare targeting of impeachable behaviors. Thus, Roberto Laserna, writ

ing on the protest movements that removed Sanchez de Lozada in Bolivia in 2003, criti

cizes "a populist conservative movement that articulates communitarian and statist nos

talgias" and laments that democratic citizenship is seen as all rights and no responsibili

ties.53 Valenzuela also worries that protests against presidents can lead to crises that

threaten the whole constitutional order.54 Most authors, including Valenzuela, emphasize that such protest movements arise

out of the frustrations of what are now several decades of problematic and incomplete

democracy.55 Also writing about Bolivia, but before the fall of Sanchez de Lozada,

Laurence Whitehead summarizes a litany of concerns that lie behind many interpreta

tions of this new round of challenges to presidents.

Behind the whole movement lay the conviction that a generation of liberalizing reforms had failed to deliver tangible benefits to the majority of the people; that political parties of all stripes had become

self-serving cliques incapable of solving national problems; that only direct action in defiance of pub lic authority could deliver any worthwhile changes in government policy; that all institutional proce dures were devices to delay and frustrate public demands; and that any who held back from following

this logic would lose out to those who acted first.56

To paraphrase Laverna, protesters have concluded that it is politicians who think

democracy is all rights and no responsibilities. Seen in this light, the protests are democ

ratic processes, with civil society seeking to have a voice where it has been roughly

excluded or, as Lucero argues for the indigenous movements of Ecuador, simply engag

ing in the historic process of constructing rights through political contestation.57 Whether Whitehead's observations are literally true in all the countries of South

America in the first years of the twenty-first century, a question that is beyond the scope

of this article, it is an undeniable fact that most South American countries have move

ments that share these convictions and are acting on them.

Conclusion: Presidents, Legislatures, Publics, and Presidentialism

Challenged presidents share a set of probabilistic risk factors: personal implication in

scandal, neoliberal policies, and minority status. At the same time, the dynamics of

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recent challenges to presidents and their outcomes appear to be closely related to the

complicated and less studied phenomenon of street protest. The patterns of interaction among presidents, legislatures, and publics, as they have appeared in recent South

American politics, require new attention to presidentialism and to possible variations in

it in different regions of the world. In a presidential system presidents inevitably stand apart and above other political

actors because of their special powers and special sources of legitimacy.58 Since 1978

the shape of these powers has been on the political agenda in South American countries

nearly constantly. The huge amount of time and energy that went into challenges to

presidents is yet another demonstration of the centrality of presidents. At the same time,

the regular challenges to presidents show how vulnerable they are to the withdrawal of

their special legitimacy. Populations evidently can and do withdraw their mandates for

presidents to rule them, and few presidents have survived large and violent mobiliza

tions against them. The phenomenon of South American presidential fall suggests several observations

about legislatures and their relationships to both presidents and publics. In extreme

political events, like removal from office, legislatures emerge as stronger in practice

than would be expected from their comparative weakness in more normal politics.

Legislatures took part in bringing down five presidents, often cutting constitutional cor ners in the process. In contrast, only Peruvian president Fujimori managed to close a

legislature, despite regular rumors of "another Fujimorazo." Mass publics have not turned against legislators in the same way that they have pushed out presidents. There

were only two cases of mass protests against congresses, the "que se vayan todos" (get

them all out) mobilizations in Argentina after the fall of De la Rua and similar fury in

the Ecuadorian streets in 2000 after the civil society/military coup failed. There may be

some difference in the nature of the mandate given to presidents as opposed to that of

legislatures, perhaps related to their separation of purpose.59 Alternatively, it may simply

be too complicated to take down a group of diverse actors like a congress.

Legislators also can exercise their power against presidents only with allies in civil

society. Political scientists need to return some attention to state-society relations to

understand political outcomes and the quality of democracy. It seems clear that South

American politicians and parties are steadily less able to channel a significant portion of

social demands into existing political institutions. This conclusion is supported by quite

different evidence on party affiliations and elections as well.60 Whether civil society,

political society, or both are responsible for this breakdown in representation, they must

be engaged for the sake of both the quality and stability of regional democracy. Further

research in this direction could look not just at street protests, but also at other data

related to the population at large, such as public opinion, unemployment figures, and

the sustained presence or absence of street actors who can effectively veto policy as well

as challenge presidents.

Overall, the evidence on presidential falls supports the arguments that at least in

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South America presidentialism is a political system with special vulnerabilities. However, they are not necessarily quite like those identified to date. Not only do the dual democratic legitimacies of presidents and legislatures push them toward competi tion, but because of the unanticipated capacity of publics to withdraw their mandates from presidents, the public remains an active player in the development of presidencies.6' It can be a crucial support to either side in the ongoing struggles between executives and legislatures and deserves further study as such. Moreover, the forty percent of South American presidents who were challenged by legislatures or protest movements and the twenty-three percent who were forced out of office early confirm that presidential terms are not as rigidly defined in practice as the theoretical

discussion suggests. These two observations support the argument that South American presidentialism is prone to breakdown.

Yet the version of breakdown is not the descent into authoritarianism that most fear. Awkward, violent, uncertain challenges to South American presidents after 1978 result ed in new civilian governments. Schamis credits the survival of democracy in Argentina to special quasi-parliamentary institutions, but all of the countries where presidents fell produced similar results with a variety of procedures.62 While the details vary, they too passed through a period of "high-level bargaining of the kind that is typical of parlia

mentary systems after an election has been held or a government has collapsed" and

came out with a new president and some kind of term and went on.63 The parliamentary

phrase of lost confidence is also helpfully evocative of the ways the electorate can with

draw its mandate for a president to rule. Thus, the often-lamented institutional flexibility

of South American countries may be producing its own hybrid of parliamentalism and

presidentialism in practice that has helped create the unexpected stability of basic elec toral democracy in the region, even as individual presidents fell. This hybrid behavior

may also appear in routine decision making.64

Challenges to presidents and presidential falls are not limited to South America, as

shown by the experiences of Philippine president Estrada, President Clinton in the

United States, and others. One obvious next step for research is to catalogue challenges

to presidentialism outside South America and their causes and outcomes. This analysis

of South American experiences can not make conclusions about the worldwide phe

nomenon. Certainly, South America is unusual in the extreme flexibility of its presiden tial terms, especially in contrast with the classic case of U.S. presidentialism and its con

tinuing highly rigid terms. Which, if either, is a better starting point for understanding the general phenomena of presidentialism and presidential fall is an open question.

Whether the more specific motivations for challenges hold and whether street protests are equally decisive elsewhere are open questions too, although it is worth noting that

the failed congressional challenge to Clinton also failed to mobilize support in the

streets. In any case, the phenomenon of presidential fall deserves additional research and

appears more important for current presidentialism than outright regime breakdown.

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NOTES

I would like to acknowledge helpful suggestions from Javier Auyero, Elisabeth Jay Friedman, Dawn King, Steven Levitsky, Fiona Macaulay, Vicky Murillo, David Samuels, Kurt Weyland, and the anonymous reviewers.

Special thanks to Kyle Saunders for assisting with the statistical analysis and its interpretation. Finally, the

librarians of the Latin American Centre, Oxford University, were very helpful in facilitating my need to read

hundreds of issues of Latin American Weekly Report. 1. Juan J. Linz and Arturo Valenzuela, eds., The Failure of Presidential Democracy (Baltimore: The Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1994); Scott Mainwaring and Matthew Soberg Shugart, eds., Presidentialism and

Democracy in Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997); Adam Przeworski, Michael

Alvarez, Jos? Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, Democracy and Development: Political Institutions

and Economic Performance, 1950-1999 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). 2. Giovanni Sartori, Comparative Constitutional Engineering, 2nd ed. (New York: New York University

Press, 1994), p. 84.

3. Juan J. Linz, "Presidential or Parliamentary Democracy: Does It Make a Difference?," in Linz and

Valenzuela, eds., p. 6.

4. Linz, p. 7.

5. John M. Carey, "Transparency vs. Collective Action: Fujimori's Legacy and the Peruvian Congress,"

Comparative Political Studies, 36 (November 2003), 983-1006; Hector E. Schamis, "Argentina: Crisis and

Democratic Consolidation," Journal of Democracy, 13 (April 2002), 81-94. Carey's review of a series of recent

cases also presumes that executive-legislative relations are central. John M. Carey, "Presidentialism and

Representative Institutions," in Jorge I. Dom?nguez and Michael Shifter, eds., Constructing Democratic

Governance in Latin America, 2nd ed. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003), pp. 22-25.

6. Diego Abente-Brun, '"People Power' in Paraguay," Journal of Democracy, 10 (July 1999), 93-100;

Ernesto Garc?a Calder?n, "High Anxiety in the Andes: Peru's Decade of Living Dangerously," Journal of

Democracy, 12 (April 2001), 46-58; Jos? Antonio Lucero, "High Anxiety in the Andes: Crisis and Contention

in Ecuador" Journal of Democracy, 12 (April 2001), 59-73; Kurt Weyland, "The Rise and Fall of President

Collor and Its Impact on Brazilian Democracy," Journal oflnteramerican Studies and World Affairs, 35 (1993), 1-37. In the conclusion to his comparative study of a new presidentialism, P?rez-Li??n acknowledges the

apparent role of popular protest but does not analyze it. An?bal P?rez-Li??n, "Pugna de Poderes y Crisis de

Gobernabilidad: ?Hacia un Nuevo Presidencialismo?," Latin American Research Review, 38 (October 2003), 149-64.

7. Ruud Koopmans and Dieter Rucht, "Protest Event Analysis?Where to Now?," Mobilization, 4 (Fall

1999), 123-30.

8. I use the term civil society in a narrowly descriptive way here, to indicate nonstate actors. I do not make

normative assumptions that they are necessarily civil or democratic.

9. Deborah J. Yashar, "Democracy, Indigenous Movements, and the Post Liberal Challenge in Latin

America," World Politics, 52 (October 1999), 76-106.

10. Susan C. Stokes, Mandates and Democracy: Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 2001). 11. Linz, pp. 3-5.

12. For example, Octavio Amorim Neto, "The Presidential Calculus: Executive Policy-Making and Cabinet

Formation in the Americas," Comparative Political Studies, 39 (forthcoming, August 2006); Jos? Antonio

Cheibub, "Minority Governments, Deadlock Situations, and the Survival of Presidential Democracies,"

Comparative Political Studies, 35 (April 2002), 284?312; David J. Samuels and Matthew Soberg Shugart,

"Presidentialism, Elections, and Representation," Journal of Theoretical Politics, 15 (January 2003), 33-60.

13. Kurt Weyland, "Limitations of Rational-Choice Institutionalism for the Study of Latin American

Politics," Studies in Comparative International Development, 37 (January 2002), 57-85.

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Kathryn Hochstetler

14. Barbara Geddes, Paradigms and Sand Castles: Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003).

15. Koopmans and Rucht.

16. Hrtp://www.latinnews.com/lwr_/LWR_2315 .asp. Citations to specific issues follow the Report's format:

WR-00-03 is the third issue of the Weekly Report in 2000.

17. This type of action contrasts with the more institutionalized kinds of activity that have emerged in many

social movements sectors since the return to civilian rule. See Elisabeth Jay Friedman and Kathryn Hochstetler,

"Assessing the Third Transition in Latin American Democratization: Representational Regimes and Civil

Society in Brazil and Argentina," Comparative Politics, 35 (October 2002), 21-42.

18. Carol Wise and Riordan Roett, eds., with Guadalupe Paz, Post-Stabilization Politics in Latin America:

Competition, Transition, Collapse (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2003). 19. Data for 1982-1995 are from Stokes, pp. 14-15. Data for other years are from the Economist. This col

umn in Table 1 is marked "yes" for presidents whose policy orientation in government was neoliberal, "no" for

policy orientations that the Economist calls "populist." 20. See also Jody C Baumgartner, "Introduction: Comparative Presidential Impeachment," in Jody C

Baumgartner and Naoko Kada, eds., Checking Executive Power: Presidential Impeachment in Comparative

Perspective (Westport: Praeger, 2003); An?bal P?rez-Li??n, "Presidential Crises and Democratic Accountability in Latin America, 1990-1999," in Susan E. Eckstein and Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, eds., What Justice?

Whose Justice? Fighting for Fairness in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003). 21. Baumgartner, p. 5.

22. WR-93-36.

23. See WR-92-01; Anibal Romero, "Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic: The Agony of

Democracy in Venezuela," Latin American Research Review, 32 (1997), 15.

24. WR-00-02.

25. WR-00-40.

26. This estimate of the level of corruption is very conservative, as LAWR frequently does not report cor

ruption charged in other sources. In addition, it should be noted that a president is labeled corrupt only if the

report is made during the term when he might have been challenged. In this column of Table 1, "yes" indicates

that the president was personally implicated in charges of impeachable offenses, normally financial corruption. 27. They were Alfonsin, De la Rua, and Sanchez de Lozada II in Bolivia, for whom corruption was report

ed in his first term.

28. WR-92-17.

29. Catherine M. Conaghan, James M. Malloy, and Luis A. Abugattas, "Business and the 'Boys': The

Politics of Neoliberalism in the Central Andes," Latin American Research Review, 25 (1990), 3-30; Anita Isaacs,

"Problems of Democratic Consolidation in Ecuador," Bulletin of Latin American Research, 10 (1991), 221-38.

30. John Crabtree, "The Collapse of Fujimorismo: Authoritarianism and Its Limits," Bulletin of Latin

American Research, 20 (July 2001), 295.

31. Peter Lambert, "A Decade of Electoral Democracy: Continuity, Change and Crisis in Paraguay," Bulletin of Latin American Research, 19 (July 2000), 392; Abente-Brun.

32. Data for 1978-1997 are from Charles D. Kenney, Fujimori's Coup and the Breakdown of Democracy in

Latin America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 264-66. For presidents after 1997,

data are from www.observatorioelectoral.org, using Kenney's methodology ("[a] presidency is considered to

have had a legislative majority if the president enjoyed the support of a majority in each legislative chamber

throughout his or her term in office). Kenney, p. 333, note 3. It should be noted that this definition is stringent. 33. Lambert.

34. John C Dugas, "Drugs, Lies, and Audiotape: The Samper Crisis in Colombia (Review Essay)," Latin

American Research Review, 36 (2001), 157-74; Naoko Kada, "The Role of Investigative Committees in the

Presidential Impeachment Processes in Brazil and Colombia," Legislative Studies Quarterly, 28 (February

2003), 29-54.

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Comparative Politics July 2006

35. Scott Mainwaring, "Presidentialism, Multipartism, and Democracy: The Difficult Combination,"

Comparative Political Studies, 26 (July 1993), 198-228.

36. Michael Tomz, Jason Wittenberg, and Gary King, CLARIFY: Software for Interpreting and Presenting Statistical Results, Version 2.1, Stanford University, University of Wisconsin, and Harvard University, January

5, 2003. available at http://gking.harvard.edu/. Also see Gary King, Michael Tomz, and Jason Wittenberg,

"Making the Most of Statistical Analyses: Improving Interpretation and Presentation," American Journal of Political Science, 44 (April 2000), 347-61.

37. Since this set is a population rather than a sample, the probabilities are the most important indicator of

the relationships in the data. A table of the coefficients and results are available from the author upon request. 38. Peter Flynn, "Collor, Corruption and Crisis: Time for Reflection," Journal of Latin American Studies,

25 (May 1993), 351-71; Weyland, "The Rise and Fall of President Collor."

39. See Flynn, p. 364; Marcos Nobre, "Pensando o Impeachment," Novos Estudos CEBRAP, 34 (November

1992), 15-19.

40. Comisi?n Ciudadana de Seguimiento, Poder, Justicia e Indignidad: El Juicio al Presidente de la

Rep?blica Ernesto Samper Pizano (Bogot?: Comisi?n Ciudadana de Seguimiento, 1996). 41. Kada.

42. In most cases there is no reliable information about the exact size of mobilizations. Estimates for those

in Venezuela in 2002-3 show the broadest range, from tens of thousands to a million. WR-02-28.

43. WR-03-07; WR-02-15; WR-02-50.

44. Lucero, p. 63.

45. WR-02-01; WR-02-15.

46 WR-03^14.

47. WR-02-02,p. 14.

48. WR-02-29.

49. Javier Auyero and Timothy Patrick Moran, "The Dynamics of Collective Violence: Dissecting Food

Riots in Contemporary Argentina" (unpublished manuscript); Enrique Peruzzotti, "Civic Engagement in

Argentina: From the Human Rights Movement to the 'Cacerolazos'" (unpublished manuscript), p. 1.

50. Schamis, p. 85.

51. WR-03^1.

52. Yashar.

53. Roberto Laserna, "Bolivia: Entre Populismo y Democracia," Nueva Sociedad, 188 (November December 2003), 4-14.

54. Arturo Valenzuela, "Latin American Presidencies Interrupted," Journal of Democracy, 15 (October

2004), 5-19.

55. Crabtree; Lucero; Valenzuela; Wise and Roett.

56. Laurence Whitehead, "High Anxiety in the Andes: Bolivia and the Viability of Democracy," Journal of

Democracy, 12 (April 2001), 13.

57. Lucero, p. 70.

58. Valenzuela.

59. Samuels and Shugart. 60. Kenneth M. Roberts and Erik Wibbels, "Party Systems and Electoral Volatility in Latin America: A Test

of Economic, Institutional, and Structural Explanations "

American Political Science Review, 93 (September

1999), 575-90.

61. Linz; Valenzuela.

62. Schamis, pp. 90-91.

63. Ibid., p. 91.

64. Bolivar Lamounier, "Brazil: An Assessment of the Cardoso Administration," in Dom?nguez and

Shifter, eds., pp. 269-91.

418