Between Presidential Power and Legislative Veto

Download or read book Between Presidential Power and Legislative Veto written by Andreas Hahn and published by Logos Verlag Berlin GmbH. This book was released on 2010 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reform success and reform delay are subject to a variety of explanations. In general, high decisiveness leads to reform propensity, while its absence, or high resoluteness, to policy-gridlock. The Brazilian reform experience is contradicting: both aspects are present - factors leading to decisiveness as well as those inducing gridlock and reform delay. Leaving the static point of view and accounting for a dynamic development, this apparent contradiction gets resolved: in fact, the executive gained growing leeway during the 1990s, providing it with the means to achieve a higher degree of decisiveness of the political system by simultaneously guaranteeing resoluteness.It is, however, greatly mistaken to consider this development as a blank cheque to universal, encompassing reforming in all areas. Despite growing executive dominance and growing policy consensus, some particular reforms were a success, while others did not surpass its initial stages. This is finally due to path-dependency and explicit policy-specificities, triggering different institutional constraints and veto-points, which even strong Presidents cannot override.