Latin America: presidential resignations and the role of Congress

Abstract

Since the 1980s have occurred numerous presidential resignations in different Latin American countries. The novelty was that these crises were not followed by regime instability. The paper interrogates this phenomenon in two ways. In the first place, it hypothesizes that presidents resignations present two formats according to the distribution of partisan power in Congress: a) the parliamentary exit formula, and b) the presidential exit formula. In the second place, the paper explores the impact of presidential resignations on the functioning of presidential regimes. From this perspective, we hold that it seems convenient to redefine the role of fixed mandates in the characterization of presidentialism.