SURPLUS GOVERNMENT COALITIONS IN LATIN AMERICA (1979-2012)

Fernando Meireles
Federal University of Minas Gerais/Brazil
2016


# HOW TO LOAD THE DATA

The original data used in the analysis is stored in 'oversized.tab' as a delimited data file.
It can be read with conventional software. The delimiter is TAB (\tab in escape).
To load the data in R, set the working directory where the file is located and
execute the following line:

df <- read.table("oversized.txt")


# VARIABLES

* country - Country name.
* year - Year.
* presid - President name.
* negretto_leg1 - Presidential Power Index calculated by Negretto (2013). Ranges from 0 to 100.
* pres_seats - President's party seat share in the lower house.
* range1 - Ideological polarization in the lower house.
* range2 - Ideological polarization in the lower house calculated from alternative data sources.
* distance1 - Ideological distance in a unidimensional scale between the
  the president's party and the lower house median.
* cicle - Measures the remaining time in office of a president. Ranges from 0, at the end
  of the term, to 1.
* veto - Categorical variable indicating a president's veto power. Ranges from 0 to 2 (maximum).
* cda - Categorical variable indicating a president's constituonal decree powers. Ranges from 0 to 2 (maximum).
* eff_leg - Lower house's effectiveness.
* infl - Anual inflation rate. Taken from World Bank.
* enp - Effective Number of Parties (ENP) in the lower house. Data taken from various sources (see below).
* t - Number of year since the last oversized government coalition.
* bicam - Dummy variable. 1 indicates that a country is bicameral.
* surplus - Number of parties that could be removed from a coalition without it losing its surplus size.
* surplus - Dummy variable. 1 indicates that a government coalition in a given country in a given year is surplus.


# SOURCES

AMORIM NETO, Octávio (2006). The presidential calculus: executive policy making and cabinet formation in the Americas. Comparative Political Studies.

BAKER, Andy & GREENE, Kenneth F. (2011). The Latin American left's mandate: free-market policies and issue voting in new democracies. World Politics.

CHASQUETTI, Daniel (2001). Democracia, multipartidismo y coaliciones en América Latina: evaluando la difícil combinación. In: Tipos de presidencialismo y coaliciones politicas en America Latina.

CHEIBUB, José Antonio (2007). Presidentialism, parliamentarism, and democracy.

COPPEDGE, Michael (1997). A classification of Latin American political parties. Working paper.

MARTINEZ-GALLARDO, Cecília (2012). Out of the cabinet: what drives defections from the government in presidential systems? Comparative Political Studies.

NEGRETTO, Gabriel L. (2006). Minority presidents and democratic performance in Latin America. Latin American Politics and Society.

SAEZ, Manuel A. & MONTERO, Mercedes G. (2008). Institutions and politicians: and analysis of the factors that determine presidential legislative success. Working Paper.


# OTHER SOURCES

CIA World Leaders.

Lexis Nexis Academics.

El país Online.

Interviews with country experts.