ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the architecture of executive-legislative relations in the Latin America, and it becomes clear that the region matters as much as government type in predicting the distribution of constitutional provisions. Latin American presidentialism, while sharing a fair number of traits with the US archetype, is very much its own breed. The influence of the US constitution in Latin America was undoubtedly significant in the early nineteenth century. The US constitution established the archetypical presidential system in the sense that it is the model that underlies, often implicitly, discussions of separation-of-powers systems. The concentration of law-making in the presidency in particular provides for another functional advantage: accountability. In the United States, it has been argued that the rise of the so-called 'plebiscitary presidency' has changed the structure of the office. The fixed nature of the legislative and executive terms, it is argued, deprives political actors of the opportunity to remove the government constitutionally when a crisis emerges.
