TY  - JOUR
AU  - Robinson,James A.
AU  - Torvik,Ragnar
TI  - Endogenous Presidentialism
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14603
PY  - 2008
Y2  - December 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14603
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14603.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
James A. Robinson
Harvard University
Department of Government
N309, 1737 Cambridge Street
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/496-2839
Fax: 617/495-0438
E-Mail: jrobinson@gov.harvard.edu

Ragnar Torvik
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Economics
N-7491 Trondheim
Norway
E-Mail: ragnar.torvik@svt.ntnu.no
AB  - We develop a model to understand the incidence of presidential and parliamentary institutions. Our analysis is predicated on two ideas: first, that minorities are relatively powerful in a parliamentary system compared to a presidential system, and second, that presidents have more power with respect to their own coalition than prime ministers do. These assumptions imply that while presidentialism has separation of powers, it does not necessarily have more checks and balances than parliamentarism. We show that presidentialism implies greater rent extraction and lower provision of public goods than parliamentarism. Moreover, political leaders who prefer presidentialism may be supported by their own coalition if they fear losing agenda setting power to another group. We argue that the model is consistent with a great deal of qualitative information about presidentialism in Africa and Latin America.
ER  -