Friends in High Places: Congressional Influence on the Bureaucracy in Chile

Latin American Politics and Society, Summer 2008 by Ferraro, Agustín

Tsebelis and Aleman (2005) evaluate the presidents of 18 Latin American countries according to their authority to affect the legislative process at its last stage, through veto and amendatory observations. Here the president of Chile ranks as the third most powerful, after the presidents of Uruguay and Ecuador.

The authors analyze three concrete cases of legislation first passed by Congress and then either amended or partially vetoed by the presidents of Uruguay, El Salvador, and Argentina. The cases, however, only illustrate and confirm the categorization of presidential powers, which is based exclusively on constitutional and legal provisions. The classification represents, according to Tsebelis and Alemân, an evaluation of presidential power per se in Latin America (2005, 417). For the authors, in other words, veto power and amendatory observations are such crucial constitutional faculties that they translate automatically into real political strength.

All of these surveys evaluate the president of Chile as one of the most powerful in Latin America, and the country's congress, accordingly, as weak and lacking autonomous influence on public policy. All evaluations are based on constitutional and legal faculties. Although some authors mention other possible sources of power, these are not seriously discussed, let alone included in the measurements.

THE POWER OUTSIDE THE CONSTITUTION

In the context of studies on presidents and assemblies, two authors, Metcalf and Siavelis, have seriously considered the possible divergences between constitutional faculties and real political power. Metcalf (2000) discusses diverse methods for measuring power in Latin America and Eastern Europe and concludes that informal power sources should not be taken into account, at least for the moment. In several studies dealing with the relationship between the president and the Congress of Chile (1997, 2000a, b, 2002, 2006), Siavelis reaches the opposite conclusion: measurements based only on formal power sources are "superficial."

Metcalf examines two major methods for the measurement of power and identifies Shugart and Carey's approach as the more precise. He acknowledges, however, a general shortcoming of all such methods: they consider only the formal dimension of politics, legal and constitutional faculties (Metcalf 2000, 683). Nevertheless, this omission is secondary, and difficult or impossible to correct, according to Metcalf, for three main reasons. The first reason is based on the methodological priority of formal powers. It is first necessary to measure constitutional and legal faculties, because these are a resource that will be either augmented or diminished by informal politics (Metcalf 2000, 663). This does not completely exclude informal powers, but it suggests postponing their treatment until the measurement of formal powers is finished.

Informal powers must be excluded from the measurement, according to Metcalf s second argument, because it is impossible to know what informal powers the presidents of Eastern European states really have (2000, 683). In many of these countries, only one or two presidents have been in office since democratization; certain forms of influence could depend on the personality of a particular president and disappear with the next one.