Legislative Procedures and Lawmaking in Central America

ISBN-13: 9783639072709 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 204 str.

Natalia Ajenjo

Opis

The book covers issues of constitutional design, legislative procedures and agenda control four Central American cases in a comparative perspective. The results relate to the critical view that presidential systems are inherently prone to institutional deadlock, deriving from their rigid constitutional design. My findings suggest that constitutional rules only determine broad parameters of variation, and that greater attention should be paid to the endogenous procedural design of the legislative process of decision-making in the explanation of institutional performance and inter-branch dynamics. The work is comparative and bridges quantitative and qualitative analysis. The data employed are original of lawmaking in one legislative term for the four cases under analysis. A final set of normative reflections includes ideas on the relevance of understanding constitutional choice. The theoretical, substantive and methodological implications of the findings are thus reinserted into a normative view on procedural justice and the quality of democracy.

O autorze

Ajenjo Natalia Natalia Ajenjo is PhD in Political and Social Science by the European University Institute, Florence. She is currently Lecturer at the University of Burgos in the Department of Political Science.