The Deadlock of Democracy Revisited: A Model of Executive-Legislative Relations in Separation-of-Power Regimes

Abstract

Executive-legislative deadlock is perceived as the Achilles’ heel of presidential democracy, because its occurrence has been associated with democratic breakdown in Latin America. Given the centrality of deadlock in the literature, I propose a simple spatial model of executive-legislative policy-making in separation-of-power regimes that takes deadlock as its dependent variable. The model formalizes a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for deadlock, filling a lacuna in the literature. It also addresses methodological difficulties in the empirical study of deadlock, and provide some initial evidence about vetoes in U.S. states to back-up some of the claims derived from the model.

Keywords: Executive-legislative relations, negotiation, democratic breakdown

JEL Classification: D71, D72