Study title

This collection brings together data from the Coalitional Presidentialism Project, which ran at the University of Oxford from 2011-2015. The dataset contains information on the composition and legislative performance of multiparty coalitions assembled by directly elected minority presidents in nine countries (Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Kenya, Malawi, Russia, and Ukraine). The dataset also contains data from a survey conducted among 350 members of parliament across the nine countries, as well as transcripts of semi-structured interviews with these same legislators.

The research is motivated by the surprising sustainability of multiparty presidentialism in Africa, Latin America, and postcommunist Europe. Despite predictions to the contrary, presidents have been remarkably successful at winning legislative support from fragmented parliaments.The project aims: (1) to identify the tools that presidents use to govern in concert with multiparty legislatures and (2) to assess the effects of these tools on horizontal accountability in new democracies. Through a comparative analysis of presidential-legislative relations in Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Kenya, Malawi, Russia and Ukraine, the project examines how strategies of coalition management vary across cases and the impact that this has on the trade-off between policy decisiveness and horizontal accountability.