Aldo Fernando Ponce

This chapter examines the distribution of legislative agenda setting power in Peru. It confirms the conventional view that the president is a key actor in the lawmaking process. It shows that executive bills are more likely to pass than other initiatives, even when the president lacks a majority in Congress, and that presidents frequently enact legislative decrees. The analysis reveals a positive association between the use of legislative decrees and the legislative success of the president, which is consistent with the theory of “delegation.” In this particular context, both legislative paralysis between the executive and congressional players and any political crises as a consequence of the lack of majority of the president have been avoided. The chapter also shows that legislative productivity seems relatively unaffected by the lack of a majority government, and that arguments that claim the necessity of greater presidential powers do not seem applicable to the Peruvian case.

Party finance reformers often call for European parties to increase their financial reliance on small donors, but researchers have made few efforts to establish the feasibility of such strategies. This study examines partisan giving in Europe, investigating the potential for parties and policymakers to increase this type of political participation. It also asks whether there are national-level factors that make such efforts more likely to succeed in some countries. The research uses data from the European Social Survey to examine patterns of contributions to political parties in 16 European countries. It finds that the strength of partisanship predicts political giving independent of party membership, which suggests that European political parties may have some scope to increase their number of individual donors. On the other hand, existing tax policies to encourage political giving do not seem to be effective in increasing this type of partisan political participation.

In this paper, we systematically analyze decisions made by the Peruvian Constitutional Tribunal from 1996 to 2006 in amparo cases, which significantly impact individual rights. We ask the following question: in these types of cases, what conditions led the Tribunal to assert itself against the executive? Through an analysis of Tribunal decisions during the presidencies of Alberto Fujimori and Alejandro Toledo, we find that the Tribunal is more likely to rule against the executive, as the public's confidence in the executive decreases and as the share of congressional seats of the president's party declines. Further, the Tribunal is more willing to decide cases against the executive in areas that most pervade its docket, specifically in the areas of pensions and employment. These findings add to the comparative and American judicial politics literature by showing that high courts, even relatively weak ones, follow politics, but that case subject area and prevalence may temper this tendency.