Reflections on the Effectiveness and Representativeness of the Chilean Congress

In Latin America’s presidential democracies, national Congresses have often been singled out for underperforming along some important dimension and deemed due for reform. The view of Latin American Congresses as weak appendices to strong presidents, for example, was prevalent among scholars until not so long ago (Wynia 1995; Wiarda and Kline 1990). In the seminal book Presidents and Assemblies, Shugart and Carey (1992) made the case for increasing the power of Congress vis-à-vis the president to strengthen democratic stability.