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The formulas for electing presidents and the rules determining the legislative
powers of presidents are important variables for explaining the performance of
presidential democracies. This article develops a strategic choice model to
explain variations in these institutional features. Based on this model, it is
proposed here that constitution makers are likely to opt for more-than-plurality
rules of presidential elections when the number of parties necessary to pass
constitutional changes increases. It is also proposed that the makers of
constitutions are likely to strengthen the legislative powers of the president
when the number of parties necessary to pass constitutional changes increases
and when parties are decentralized. The argument is supported by a statistical
analysis of the determinants of constitutional choice in Latin America.

The most important legacy of the so-called social school of election for the study of electoral systems was the discovery that when we must democratically elect a single alternative, as happens in a presidential election, the result is actually a large arbitrary measure. With the same universe of voters, different candidates could be elected by using different formulas or by changing the options on which the voters vote. However, depending on the conditions of electoral competence, not all systems to elect a president are equally arbitrary. When more than two important candidates compete, the worst possible system is that currently used in Mexico -- the relative majority. In Mexico's 2006 presidential election under the rule of the relative majority, the declared winner, Felipe Calderon received little more than a third of the vote. This essay analyzes the deficiencies of this system & suggests alternatives. Adapted from the source document.

Growing public discontent with the performance and quality of many contemporary democracies makes them vulnerable to popular pressures to profoundly transform or replace their constitutions. However, there is little systematic academic discussion on the legal and political challenges that these events pose to democratic principles and practices. This book, a collaborative effort by legal scholars and political scientists, analyzes these challenges from an interdisciplinary and comparative perspective. It fills a theoretical vacuum by examining the possibility that constitutions might be replaced within a democratic regime, while exploring the conditions under which these processes are more compatible or less compatible with democratic principles. It also calls attention to the real-world political importance of the phenomenon, because recent episodes of constitutional redrafting in countries including Kenya, Poland, Venezuela and Hungary suggest that some aspects of these processes may be associated with either the improvement or the gradual erosion of democracy.

El objetivo de este artículo es explicar el modelo particular de distribución de poderes que surgió del proceso constituyente de 1853-60 en Argentina. Me centraré en dos de las características centrales de este diseño: la estructura de poder presidencial y las instituciones que regularon las relaciones entre el gobierno central y las unidades regionales. En ambas dimensiones, mostraré que la constitución de 1853-60 representó una combinación inusual de elementos de presidencialismo dominante y centralismo, con principios de frenos y contrapesos y federalismo. ; The purpose of this article is to explain the particular model of power distribution that emerged from the 1853-1860 constituent process in Argentina. I will focus on two central features of this design: the structure of presidential power and the institutions that governed the relations between the central government and regional units. I will show that in both dimensions of design the Constitution of 1853-1860 represented an unusual combination of elements of presidential dominance and centralism, with principles of checks and balances and federalism.

"Constitution-Making in Comparative Perspective" published on by Oxford University Press.