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Executive-Legislative Relations: When do Legislators Trust the President?
Ignacio Arana Araya and Carolina Guerrero Valencia
Introduction
Executive-legislative relations have historically been a central area of research in the study of
presidentialism, and they continue to be actively examined (Alcántara & Sánchez, 2001; Gamboa
Valenzuela, 2005; Pérez-Liñán, 2007; Saiegh, 2015; Shugart, 2006). An important driver for this
research is that, at its extreme, interbranch conflict can lead to a democratic collapse. So far, the
literature has analyzed how the institutional and political context explain interbranch conflict,
paying little attention to the interpersonal dimension of executive-legislative relations. This is
surprising, since at their core interbranch relations are about intensive interaction among political
elites. Arguably, the trust that legislators have in the incumbent signals their willingness to
negotiate and reach agreements with the head of government. Therefore, all else being equal,
higher levels of trust should lead to less interbranch conflict. In this chapter, we begin to address
the factors that explain legislative trust in presidents. Besides taking into account conventional
explanations of executive-legislative conflict, we investigate whether the personal characteristics
of presidents are associated with how much trust legislators have in them.
Part of the literature on political systems has proposed that the separation of powers
characteristic of presidentialism leads to higher levels of executive-legislative conflict than in
parliamentary systems (Linz, 1990, 1994; Saiegh, 2015; Shugart, 2006). In presidential systems,
the two branches are elected separately but need one another to accomplish policy goals that
require the passage of legislation. When these branches have difficulties in reaching agreements,
they often resort to a veto, which in turn leads to legislative gridlock (Gamboa Valenzuela, 2005:
65). At the extreme, interbranch conflict can lead to one state power dissolving the other. The
consequences of such constitutional crises range from putting an enormous strain on the
political system to provoking a regime change.
Recent cases of overreaching executives include Presidents Hugo Chávez and Rafael Correa,
who respectively convoked constituent assemblies in Venezuela in 1999 and Ecuador in 2007-
2008 that led to a replacement of both the constitution and the members of the legislature. These
countries therefore experienced significant polarization and both incumbents saw a
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consolidation of their power. President Alberto Fujimori of Peru led another extreme case of
executive-legislative conflict; elected president in 1990, Fujimori had only minority support in
Congress. His first year in office was characterized by frequent confrontations with the
legislature and deep mutual distrust. In 1992, opposing legislators began to discuss the
impeachment of Fujimori publicly. In a preventive move in April of that year, Fujimori argued
that emergency measures were required to combat terrorism and to restructure the state and the
economy. To overcome executive-legislative gridlock, he led a self-coup with the help of the
military, shutting down the legislature, purging the judiciary, and suspending the constitution.
After these first measures were taken, he called for legislative elections, obtained a subservient
legislature, and led a replacement of the constitution that consolidated his power and allowed
him to extend his stay in office. The consequence of this extreme form of interbranch
confrontation was to turn a democracy into an authoritarian regime (Mainwaring & Pérez-Liñán,
2013).
Impeachments, which are recurrent in many countries of the region, can also cause significant
political instability. For instance, every Brazilian president since the 1985 transition has been
exposed to the threat of impeachment (Llanos & Nolte, 2016). Throughout the region, between
1992 and 2016, eight presidents were removed from office through an impeachment or by a
declaration of incapacity issued by the legislature: Fernando Collor (1992) and Dilma Rousseff
(2016) in Brazil, Carlos Andrés Pérez (1993) in Venezuela, Abdalá Bucaram (1997) and Lucio
Gutiérrez (2005) in Ecuador, Raúl Cubas (1999) and Fernando Lugo (2012) in Paraguay, and
Otto Pérez Molina (2015) in Guatemala. Two Peruvian presidents – Fujimori (2000) and Pedro
Pablo Kuczynski (2018) – resigned in order to prevent their impeachments. According to Pérez-
Liñán (2007, 2018), the frequent occurrence of impeachments suggests that the quality and
institutional performance of Latin American democracies are often too weak, leading to cycles
of presidential dominance and presidential failure.
How is it that such extremes of executive-legislative confrontation are so often reached? Given
the high stakes involved in interbranch relations, numerous studies have identified different
causes conducive to conflict, and we address that literature in the next section. In the subsequent
section, we conduct an exploratory panel analysis to examine the causes of legislative trust in
presidents. To measure trust, we use survey data from the Parliamentary Elites of Latin America
project (PELA-USAL), which covers 18 Latin American countries from 1994-2018. We find that
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factors capturing the interbranch distribution of power, the political context in which executive-
relations take place, and the personal (biographical and psychological) characteristics of
presidents are all relevant to analyzing the trust that legislators have in incumbents. We believe
that these findings support the idea that a holistic approach is necessary to understanding both
interpersonal trust among political elites and executive-legislative relations.
I. Causes of interbranch conflict
Under the presumption that factors that strain interbranch relations are also likely to be
associated with an erosion of legislative trust in presidents, we examine the literature on
executive-legislative conflict to uncover explanatory variables. Furthermore, since interbranch
relations are to a large degree about interpersonal relations among political elites, we also explore
literature that can be seen as associating executive-legislative relations to the personal
characteristics of presidents.
Research has proposed that the interbranch distribution of power affects executive-legislative
relations, in particular by way of legislative fragmentation, the legislative support that a president
enjoys (or lacks), whether the incumbent party is institutionalized, and whether the government
is supported by a coalition of parties.
One of the ways in which party systems influence the workability of executive-legislative
relations is through party composition in the legislature (Saiegh, 2015: 173). Amorim Neto (2006)
showed that when the legislature is overly fragmented, presidents are more likely to surrender
the idea of maintaining a cabinet reflective of legislative forces, due to the difficulty of
accommodating multiple parties in the executive branch and of reaching agreements with the
legislative. In these circumstances, presidents may prefer to use their powers of decree and to
transact with individual legislators (Shugart, 2006: 56), which increases the chances of
antagonizing the Congress.
The support that presidents can count on within the legislature also affects interbranch relations.
Minority presidents (i.e., leaders who are not supported by a congressional majority) have little
influence over parties and may face executive-legislative deadlock, which impedes them from
advancing campaign promises or preferred public policies (Negretto, 2006). Consequently,
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minority presidents have been associated with an ineffective government, high levels of
executive-legislative conflict, and even democratic instability (Negretto, 2006).
Some authors propose that when the ruling party is institutionalized, it has strong incentives to
oppose overreaching presidents. Corrales (2016) argues that institutionalized parties do not feel
compelled to break rules to remain in power, because they already have a long life-expectancy;
and they are adverse to personalist projects because they depend on rules, norms, and policy
positions that represent groups of voters. Kouba (2016) adds that institutionalized parties can
constrain presidents because heads of government need such parties to be elected and to govern.
In contrast, deinstitutionalized parties are more inclined to follow overreaching leaders, because
their electoral future may be tied to those leaders’ careers. These reasons would attest to why
overreaching popular presidents can be tempted to deinstitutionalize their own parties (Corrales,
2016).
Finally, the literature has supported the idea that executive administrations that reflect coalitions
are less conflict-prone vis-à-vis the legislature (Amorim Neto, 2006; Martínez-Gallardo &
Schleiter, 2015). Presidents often appoint ministers and use cabinet coordination mechanisms to
build legislative coalitions and to get their policy agenda enacted. When appointing ministers
from other parties, presidents delegate relevant authority over policy formulation, enactment,
and implementation. This delegation helps presidents to receive in exchange the support of
coalition parties in Congress.
Prior research has also associated levels of interbranch conflict to factors related to the political
context, such as the electoral support that presidents receive, the level of democratic and
economic development, and the age of the particular democracy.
According to Corrales (2016), approval ratings are the most powerful resource for presidents,
especially against opposition parties. When riding a high wave of popularity, presidents are
tempted to confront or bypass Congress. For instance, popular presidents may feel encouraged
to use their veto powers or to dictate executive orders when Congress does not support them.
Similarly, presidents are often ferociously attacked when their approval ratings are low (Pérez-
Liñán, 2007: 13). Thus, presidents elected with particularly low or particularly high electoral
support often experience more friction with Congress.
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Research further supports the idea that countries at higher levels of democratic and economic
development should experience less executive-legislative conflict. One reason for this is that
executive-legislative relations tend to be more balanced, because the separation of powers is
enforced. Pennings (2003), for example, claimed that established democracies are better
equipped to counteract the executive because they possess stronger, more developed legislatures
than nations with less consolidated democracies. Economic misfortune, on the other hand, may
introduce changes in interbranch relations. For example, Przeworski (1991) argued that shock-
therapy reforms to the economy produce a political backlash that moves public opinion in favor
of strong presidents.
A second argument is that countries that are more democratically and economically developed
enjoy more stability because political elites are more constrained by norms and institutions. This
would explain why developed democracies and economies experience more constitutional
stability (Elkins, Ginsburg & Melton, 2009; see also Persson & Tabellini, 2005) and lower
probabilities of regime change (Feng, 1997). Furthermore, Baturo (2014) proposed that leaders
will have greater incentives to overstay their time in power as the value of holding office
increases, which according to him occurs in poorer countries due to abundant opportunities to
extract rents from the economy. In these cases, heads of government are expected to view the
office as a source of personal wealth, while stepping down may involve losing immunity.
The age of a nation’s democracy can also be associated with levels of executive-legislative trust.
Research has proposed that new democracies experience a reemergence of citizen trust in the
political system, as they expect that new authorities will implement policy changes that in turn
will quickly improve their life standards (Catterberg & Moreno, 2005). For this reason,
O’Donnell and Schmitter (1986) proposed that initial democratic elections experience a large
voter turnout. Nonetheless, over time, unmet expectancies lead to political disaffection and a
subsequent decrease in both voter turnout and the trust of citizens in elected authorities.
Building on this research, younger democracies should enjoy higher levels of interpersonal trust
in executive-legislative relations, with the new democratic political elite in power ostensibly
embracing political tolerance and the democratic norms and practices that were absent in the
preceding authoritarian regime.
Finally, research on presidents suggests that certain personal characteristics of these leaders may
be related to how much trust legislators have in them. Political scientists and psychologists have
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thoroughly examined a potential relationship between the personal characteristics of leaders (and
their leadership) and performance in office (Tetlock, 1981; Rubenzer & Faschingbauer, 2004;
Simonton, 2002, 2006), often as measured by rankings of presidential ‘greatness’ (Schlesinger,
1997; Murray & Blessing, 1983). By extension, it might be expected that presidents who show
better performance should also enjoy higher levels of trust from legislative office-holders.
Several works have explored how leaders’ personality traits may explain their performance in
office. Researchers have measured the ‘Big Five’ personality traits of presidents (Kowert, 1996;
Rubenzer, Faschingbauer & Ones, 2000; Simonton, 2006), their intellectual capacities
(Simonton, 2002, 2006), their “integrative complexity” (Tetlock, 1981; Thoemmes & Conway
III, 2007), their motivations (House, Spangler & Woycke, 1991; Winter, 1987), and traits such
as moderation, friendliness, Machiavellianism, forcefulness, wit, conservatism, inflexibility,
pacifism, activity inhibition, narcissism, pessimistic rumination, and psychopathy (Lilienfeld et
al., 2012; Simonton, 1986; Deluga, 1997; Zullow & Seligman, 1990).
Beyond personality traits, there is also a growing literature examining the personal trajectories of
heads of state. Several authors have sought to predict presidential performance based on leaders’
birth order (among siblings), height, age when reaching office, and religious affiliation (Holmes
& Elder, 1989; McCann, 1995; Simon & Uscinski, 2012). Some have assessed the connection
between the personal biographies of leaders and specific governance outcomes. For example,
Congleton and Zhang (2013) found that the career path and education of chief executives drive
their economic policy judgment. Similarly, Horowitz and Stam (2014) found that the leaders
most likely to initiate militarized disputes are those with prior military service but no combat
experience, as well as former rebels.
The political experience and political socialization that presidents possess may also affect the
trust that legislators have in them. Politically inexperienced leaders tend to have a superficial
understanding of governmental practices. Furthermore, they are unlikely to value developing
good relations with Congress much, because they are not used to making concessions to
opponents. In line with this reasoning, previous research has found that outsider presidents
increase executive-legislative conflict (Kenney, 2004). Furthermore, individuals who reach the
presidency with little socialization into politics are not so constrained as seasoned politicians
would be by elite networks and democratic practices. The political success of such leaders is
mainly based on ties developed with their base of support, rather than a political career in which
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they developed commitments to other politicians; therefore, they should be less likely to invest
much energy in building strong interpersonal relations with legislators. Furthermore, while these
presidents might potentially compensate for their inexperience with competent staff members
and advisors, prior research suggests they rarely do so (Linz, 1994; Levitsky & Cameron, 2003).
Finally, recent research has examined how psychological and non-psychological characteristics
of presidents may be relevant to political outcomes. Using a unique database on presidents in
the Americas, Arana (2018a, 2019) examined all those Latin American leaders who between 1945
and 2012 tried to consolidate their power through a constitutional reform, either by relaxing
term limits or by increasing their formal powers. He found that presidents who are highly
dominant and with less political experience are more likely to seek to extend their stay in office,
and that leaders who are more assertive and prone to risk-taking are more likely to try to increase
their powers. Furthermore, Arana (2016) argued that the high risk-taking personality of President
Evo Morales of Bolivia, especially in social terms, helps to explain why he consistently sought
to relax his term limits, also correctly predicting that Morales would continue his attempts to
remain in office.
II. Empirical analysis
To examine the trust that legislators have in presidents, we use the University of Salamanca
Database of Parliamentary Elites (or PELA-USAL). Since 1994, PELA-USAL has conducted as
many as five waves (depending on the country) of structured interviews with Latin American
legislators in all countries of the region except Cuba. One of the questions in its survey asks: “In
relation to the following people, groups, and institutions, what degree of trust – “much”, “quite
a lot”, “little”, or “none” – describes their performance in [your country’s] public life?”
Following this, a list is presented that includes ‘the president’ among the alternatives. Most of
the PELA-USAL surveys are conducted at the beginning of a new legislative term, so the level
of trust provides an important indication of how newly elected legislators perceive the
incumbent. We use this question to capture the dependent variable, presented in ordinal scale
ranging between 1 (for ‘none’) and 4 (for ‘much’ trust). Among the 6,705 answers recorded in
the sample, 12.5% of the legislators (835) stated that their confidence in the president was ‘none’;
21.6% (1,446 answers) claimed ‘little’ trust in the president; 33% (2,217) reported ‘quite a lot’ of
trust; and 33% (2,207) claimed ‘much’ trust.
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Table 1 presents the countries and legislatures where the surveys took place, the number of
persons surveyed, and the presidents assessed. Again, the surveys covered all countries of the
region except Cuba for nearly two decades. In most cases, more than half of lower chamber
legislators were interviewed, which suggests that the opinions of legislators are accurately
represented.
Table 1. PELA-USAL Surveys Used
Country
Legislatures (interviews)
Incumbents Assessed
Argentina
1997-2001 (128); 2003-2007 (107); 2005-2009 (110);
2009-2013 (70).
Carlos Menem, Néstor Kirchner, Cristina
Fernández,
Bolivia
1997-2002 (98); 2002-2007 (80); 2006-2010 (98);
2010-2014 (97).
Hugo Banzer, Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada,
Evo Morales.
Brasil
2003-2007 (134); 2007-2010 (129); 2010-2014 (123).
Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff.
Chile
1997-2001 (89); 2002-2006 (88); 2006-2010 (90);
2010-2014 (86); 2014-2018 (68).
Eduardo Frei, Ricardo Lagos, Michelle
Bachelet, Sebastián Piñera.
Colombia
1998-2002 (87); 2002-2006 (95); 2006-2010 (107);
2010-2014 (91); 2014-2018 (81).
Andrés Pastrana, Álvaro Uribe, Juan Manuel
Santos.
Costa Rica
1998-2002 (49); 2002-2006 (51); 2006-2010 (57);
2010-2014 (56); 2014-2018 (55).
Óscar Arias, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Abel
Pacheco, Laura Chinchilla, Luis Guillermo
Solís.
Ecuador
1998-2002 (112); 2002-2006 (98); 2007-2008 (98);
2009-2012 (95); 2013-2017 (94).
Jamil Mahuad, Lucio Gutiérrez, Rafael
Correa, Lenín Moreno.
El Salvador
1997-2000 (58); 2000-2003 (64); 2003-2006 (80);
2009-2011 (68); 2012-2015 (62).
Armando Calderón Sol, Francisco Flores,
Antonio Saca, Mauricio Funes.
Guatemala
2000-2004 (79); 2004-2008 (121); 2008-2012 (97);
2012-2016 (87).
Álvaro Arzú, Alfonso Portillo, Óscar Berger,
Álvaro Colom, Otto Pérez Molina
Honduras
1997-2001 (71); 2002-2006 (102); 2006-2010 (91);
2010-2014 (91).
Carlos Roberto Flores, Ricardo Maduro,
Manuel Zelaya, Porfirio Lobo.
Mexico
1997-2000 (126); 2000-2003 (124); 2003-2006 (124);
2006-2009 (128); 2009-2011 (98); 2012-2015 (90).
Ernesto Zedillo, Vicente Fox, Felipe
Calderón.
Nicaragua
1996-2001 (70); 2001-2006 (60); 2007-2011 (69);
2011-2016 (52).
Daniel Ortega, Arnoldo Alemán, Enrique
Bolaños.
Panama
1999-2004 (64); 2004-2009 (68); 2009-2014 (64)
2014-2019 (47).
Mireya Moscoso, Martín Torrijos, Ricardo
Martinelli, Juan Carlos Varela.
Paraguay
1998-2003 (65); 2003-2008 (56); 2008-2013 (72);
2013-2018 (55).
Raúl Cubas Grau, Nicanor Duarte, Fernando
Lugo, Horacio Cartes.
Peru
2001-2006 (83); 2006-2011 (97); 2011-2016 (93).
Alan García, Alejandro Toledo, Ollanta
Humala.
Dominican
Republic
1998-2002 (103); 2002-2006 (118); 2006-2010 (94);
2010-2016 (78).
Leonel Fernández, Rafael Hipólito Mejía
Uruguay
2000-2005 (68); 2005-2010 (86); 2010-2015 (79);
2014-2019 (69).
Jorge Batlle, Tabaré Vázquez, José Mujica.
Venezuela
2000-2005 (100); 2014-2019 (67).
Hugo Chávez, Nicolás Maduro.
Source: PELA-USAL.
The independent variables are of two types. One set of variables captures the institutional and
political context in which presidents govern, and which the literature has identified as relevant
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to understanding executive-legislative relations. The second group of variables centers on the
individual characteristics of leaders.
The scholarly literature has indicated that the interbranch distribution of power is key to
understanding executive-legislative relations. Therefore, we include four variables that capture
executive-legislative power dynamics. Support for President measures the proportion of the lower
chamber that backs the head of government, ranging in this sample from 11% to 68%. Number
of Parties captures fractionalization in the lower chamber and ranges from 1.85 to 10.44. Party Age
represents the number of years that the president’s party has existed, capturing the argument
that institutionalized parties are able to hold the head of government accountable; in the sample,
this ranges between 1 and 165. Coalition is a dichotomous variable that captures whether the
government is integrated by an alliance of parties (43% of the leaders in the sample) or not. The
source for all these variables is Pérez-Liñán, Schmidt and Vairo (2019).
We include five variables that capture the broader context in which executive-legislative relations
take place. To measure the electoral strength of the chief executive, Votes captures the percentage
of votes that the winning candidate received in the first round of the presidential election. The
sources are Nohlen (2005a, 2005b) and Carr (2019), and percentages range from 20.6% to 64.2%.
Prior Legislature is a dichotomous variable that captures whether the incumbent governed with a
previous legislature (21% of the presidents in the sample) or not. The goal is to capture whether
the level of trust in presidents varies when incoming legislators are already aware of how the
incumbent related to the previous legislature. Regime measures the regime authority spectrum
using the Polity IV 21-point scale (Marshall, Jaggers & Gurr, 2014) and is included to examine
whether the argument that levels of interpersonal trust are higher in democracies might also
affect levels of executive-legislative interpersonal trust. Among the countries in the region, the
level of democracy fluctuates between 5 (the highest score for a semi-democracy) and 10 (full
democracy). GDP Per Capita measures the Gross Domestic Product per capita in thousands of
2000 US dollars and is taken from the World Development Indicators (World Bank). In the
sample, this ranges from US$716 to US$9,894. Finally, Democracy Age takes the number of years
that countries have been operating as a democracy (between 1 and 129 in the sample), to examine
whether the argument that older democracies enjoy higher levels of interpersonal trust also
applies to the sample.
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To capture the argument about the personal characteristics of presidents, we take the data from
the Presidential Database of the Americas (Arana, 2017). This dataset integrates information
from three sources and contains biographic and psychometric information on the 315 presidents
who governed 19 Latin American countries and the United States from 1945 to 2012. Data about
personality traits of presidents derive from an online survey distributed to 911 experts from 29
nations. These experts answered psychometric questionnaires validated in personality research
and designed to measure the unique characteristics of leaders. Second, research assistants coded
attributes of presidents taken from biographical data. Finally, the study was enriched by
interviews conducted with 21 former Latin American presidents.
Given the novelty of the subject under scrutiny, the literature has not provided much guidance
about what individual characteristics of leaders should be associated with the trust that legislators
place in them. In this exploratory analysis, we include several variables to begin unearthing causal
relationships.
Illegal Movements captures whether the president participated in illegal movements (guerrillas or
other illegal groups) before reaching office. It takes the value of 1 if s/he did, and 0 otherwise.
Eleven (16%) of the 70 presidents in the sample were engaged in illegal movements. Imprisoned
takes the value of 1 if the chief executive was incarcerated before reaching office (26% of the
leaders) and 0 otherwise. Entrepreneur takes the value of 1 if the president was an entrepreneur
before coming to office (28 leaders, 40% of the sample) and 0 otherwise.
Political Experience measures the formal political experience leaders had before reaching office.
This takes the value of 0 if the leader did not hold a formal political position before becoming
president (4 leaders); 1 if s/he held a political position at the regional level (e.g. major, councilor,
governor, or intendant) or was president of a political party (11 leaders); 2 if s/he held a relatively
low position in the executive administration (3 leaders); 3 if s/he was legislator, or minister or
vice-minister (31 leaders); and 4 when the president was a former legislator and ex-minister or
vice-minister, or a former head of government (21 leaders in the sample). Lawyer takes the value
of 1 if the president was a lawyer (25 leaders) and 0 otherwise. Education captures how much
formal education the president received, ranging from 1 (if s/he did not complete high school;
1 leader in the sample) to 6 (where s/he held a Ph.D. or studied two disciplines; 22 politicians).
Academic takes the value of 1 when the president worked as a university professor (21 leaders)
and 0 (49 presidents) otherwise. Woman is a dichotomous variable that captures gender (6 women
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in the sample). Civil Status takes the value of 1 if the president was married when the survey took
place (59 leaders) and 0 otherwise. Birth Order captures the order within his/her family in which
a president was born, while First Child is a dichotomous variable that distinguishes whether the
leader was born first (or was an only child; coded as 1) or not.
We use three variables taken from the answers provided by experts. Political Socialization captures
the extent to which the president was socialized into politics before reaching office. This ranges
from 1, in cases where a person became president nearly or fully by chance (i.e. circumstances
led them to take office without prior intention; 2 leaders in the sample) to 5, where a president
was raised in a political environment and became permanently involved in politics before
adulthood (5 heads of government). The mean in the sample is 3.7 – a description close to 4,
which refers to politicians who engaged in politics from youth, due to personal interests and/or
activities. Religiosity is a scale that captures whether leaders were “atheist” (coded as 1), “agnostic”
(2), “weakly religious” (3), “neither weakly nor strongly religious” (4), or “strongly religious” (5).
Related to this, Fundamentalist captures whether a leader was a religious fundamentalist, the
options being “no” (coded as 1), “partially” (2), or “yes” (3). In the sample, most leaders (28)
were classified between “neither weakly nor strongly religious” and “strongly religious.” Five
leaders were classified as “partially” fundamentalist, but none was regarded a fundamentalist.
We also test whether the legislative trust in presidents varies according to the leaders’ personality
traits. We do so by including measures of the ‘Big Five’ personality dimensions: openness to
experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. The Big Five
became the dominant paradigm after decades of research that analyzed the language that people
use to describe themselves and others. This paradigm has proved to be robust and generalizable
across virtually all cultures (McCrae & Costa, 1997; McCrae, 2009). This factor was captured
using the Big Five Inventory (BFI), a scale composed of forty-four short and simple phrases
(John, Donahue & Kentle, 1991). The BFI demonstrates internal consistency, retest reliability,
and strong convergence and discriminant validity with longer Big Five measures. It also shows
strong agreement between self-reports and peer-reports, and it works well across cultures
(Benet-Martinez & John, 1998). All of the dimensions were captured through a Likert scale
ranging from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 5 (“strongly agree”). In the sample, the mean level of
openness to experience is 3.17; of conscientiousness, 3.35; of extroversion, 3.59; of
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agreeableness, 2.87; and of neuroticism, 3. In other words, the leaders tended to rank lower in
agreeableness and higher in extroversion.
IV. Results
The trust that a legislator has in a head of government should be higher if both belong to the
same party than if they do not. Therefore, we use three samples. The benchmark sample groups
all the interviewees, while the other two differentiate between legislators who belong to the
presidents’ party and those who do not.
Given that the dependent variable is an ordinal variable, we conduct ordered logistic regression
analyses. In all models, we include country dummies to control for the likelihood that
unobserved factors related to the country where the survey took place explain the answers given
by legislators. To thoroughly examine the factors that explain legislative trust in presidents, we
conduct four rounds of analyses. One includes only those variables regarding the interbranch
distribution of power and the political context. A second round includes only biographical
information about presidents. A third examines whether the psychological traits of presidents
explain the trust placed on them. Finally, we conduct regression analyses that combine all the
variables proven statistically significant in the previous categories, to observe how they
collectively explain changes on legislative trust in presidents.
Table 2 presents the models that include only variables about the interbranch distribution of
power and the political context. Model 2.1 includes answers from all legislators; model 2.2
includes only answers from members of the president’s party, and model 2.3 includes only
answers from representatives who do not belong to the president’s party.
The level of legislative trust in a president is noticeably higher when a higher share of Congress
formally supports the head of government. Interestingly, this result is driven by members of the
president’s party (the variable is statistically significant in 2.2, but not in 2.3). Thus, members of
the presidents’ party arguably trust their leader more if he or she receives more formal legislative
support, which allows heads of government to implement their policy agenda.
As the literature on executive-legislative conflict suggests, an increasing number of parties in the
lower chamber decreases the overall trust in presidents among legislators, while trust increases
at higher levels of democracy. These results are consistent across samples. Interestingly, another
trend across samples is that trust decreases when presidents have received more electoral
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support. Perhaps legislators – whether opposition or pro-government – fear that electorally
strong leaders will be less willing to compromise with Congress. Another interesting result across
samples is that legislators exhibit more trust in presidents who have already governed (i.e. who
have dealt with a previous legislature). This may occur because heads of government have already
shown how they might interact with the legislature, leaving less uncertainty about their leadership
style. However, we believe that these initial results should be taken with a grain of salt; legislators
may also place less trust in an incumbent who had conflictive relations with the previous
legislature.
Table 2. Legislative Trust in Presidents: Institutions and Context
(2.1)
(2.2)
(2.3)
Lower Chamber
President’s Party
Other Parties
Support for President
2.05***
3.04***
-0.74
(0.31)
(0.78)
(0.47)
Number of Parties
-0.13***
-0.48***
-0.20***
(0.04)
(0.10)
(0.06)
Party Age
-0.00
-0.00
-0.02***
(0.00)
(0.00)
(0.00)
Coalition
-0.45***
-0.21
0.29*
(0.12)
(0.26)
(0.17)
Votes
-0.02***
-0.07***
-0.02***
(0.00)
(0.01)
(0.01)
Prior Legislature
0.33***
1.55***
-0.36**
(0.12)
(0.22)
(0.15)
Regime
0.31***
0.95***
0.45***
(0.05)
(0.12)
(0.06)
GDP Per Capita
-0.09
0.85***
-0.75***
(0.09)
(0.16)
(0.12)
Democracy Age
-0.00
0.00
0.02***
(0.00)
(0.00)
(0.00)
Country Dummies
✔
✔
✔
N
4394
1679
2679
Pseudo r2
0.04
0.17
0.07
Log Likelihood
-5619
-1734
-3299
* p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01
Table 3 tests the models using biographical data. Only two variables are statistically significant
across all samples: Illegal Movements and Entrepreneur. The direction of Illegal Movements seems
counterintuitive, as there should be little reason to expect that politicians who were once guerrilla
fighters or who worked in an illegal organization would enjoy higher levels of trust from a
legislative body. However, we suspect that this variable might be a proxy for another factor (for
14
example, it could be related to political moderation). Some of the leaders in the sample, such as
José Mujica of Uruguay, Alberto Pacheco of Costa Rica, and Martín Torrijos of Panama, engaged
in illegal movements in their youth but then governed as moderate leaders.
The fact that First Child is statistically significant in 3.1 and 3.2 is suggestive. Arguably, legislators
are unlikely to know (or care) whether a president was a first-born child. The explanation,
nonetheless, may operate at a psychological level. For example, the psychology literature has
identified first-borns as being more dominant (e.g. Beck, Burnet & Vosper 2006; Begue & Roche,
2005), and legislators may mistrust dominant leaders because they are less willing to compromise.
Table 3. Legislative Trust in Presidents: Biographical Data
(3.1)
(3.2)
(3.3)
Lower Chamber
President’s Party
Other Parties
Illegal Movements
1.27***
1.02***
0.94***
(0.17)
(0.37)
(0.22)
Imprisoned
-0.40
-1.52**
0.52
(0.29)
(0.64)
(0.38)
Entrepreneur
-0.83***
-1.13*
0.84***
(0.24)
(0.62)
(0.31)
Political Experience
-0.24***
-0.05
-0.13**
(0.05)
(0.11)
(0.07)
Lawyer
0.43
-0.00
0.92**
(0.28)
(0.73)
(0.37)
Education
0.05
-0.11
-0.11
(0.07)
(0.19)
(0.09)
Academic
-1.04***
-1.50***
0.26
(0.16)
(0.56)
(0.19)
Woman
0.26
-0.25
0.50
(0.25)
(0.63)
(0.33)
Civil Status
0.47***
0.06
-0.40*
(0.18)
(0.41)
(0.22)
Birth Order
0.09**
-0.18
0.00
(0.04)
(0.15)
(0.05)
First Child
-0.86***
-2.06***
-0.08
(0.12)
(0.28)
(0.15)
Political Socialization
-0.20*
0.57
-0.29**
(0.11)
(0.36)
(0.15)
Religiosity
0.21
0.43
0.26
(0.16)
(0.33)
(0.21)
Fundamentalist
0.52*
0.69
-1.15***
(0.27)
(0.63)
(0.35)
Country Dummies
✔
✔
✔
N
4256
1689
2568
Pseudo r2
0.05
0.23
0.11
Log Likelihood
-5295
-1369
-3065
* p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01
15
Table 4 examines whether the Big Five personality traits are associated with legislative trust in
presidents. The only relevant personality trait across all models is Openness to Experience, which
reflects how broadly and deeply the person in question thinks (Costa & McCrae, 1992; McCrae
& Costa, 1997). People who rank high in openness tend to be creative, intellectually curious,
sensitive to aesthetics, and attentive to inner feelings. While members of a president’s party claim
more trust in leaders open to experience, the relationship is the reverse for members of other
parties. Prior research helps to understand this dual relationship. Rubenzer, Faschingbauer and
Ones (2000) found that, among the Big Five, openness is the best predictor of who will be placed
at the top in rankings of presidential performance. If the legislators interviewed share the idea
that leaders open to experience will also perform better in office, then it seems logical that
members of a president’s party will trust leaders who are open to experience more, while
opposition legislators will express the opposite feeling.
Agreeableness also presents an interesting result. People who score high in this personality trait are
described as warm, cooperative, and kind. Agreeable people are less anger-prone (Kuppens,
2005) and tend to experience empathic emotions (Del Barrio, Aluja & García, 2004). Curiously,
both the lower chamber as a whole and members of the president’s party claim lower trust in
leaders who score higher in this trait. It may suggest that, contrary to Openness, this variable is
deemed as negative for governing. Agreeable politicians may be regarded as weak or lacking the
temperament necessary to lead. Further research should try to discover more about this finding.
Table 4. Legislative Trust in Presidents: Psychological Data
(4.1)
(4.2)
(4.3)
Lower Chamber
President’s Party
Other Parties
Openness to Experience
0.19*
0.70***
-0.29**
(0.10)
(0.23)
(0.13)
Conscientiousness
0.10
-1.08***
0.66***
(0.10)
(0.20)
(0.13)
Extroversion
-0.05
-0.37**
0.02
(0.07)
(0.16)
(0.09)
Agreeableness
-0.52***
-1.47***
0.13
(0.13)
(0.27)
(0.16)
Neuroticism
0.01
-0.58***
0.12
(0.11)
(0.21)
(0.14)
Country Dummies
✔
✔
✔
N
4315
1697
2619
Pseudo r2
0.04
0.19
0.09
Log Likelihood
-5418
-1450
-3173
* p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01
16
Table 5 integrates the variables from the previous models that were statistically significant, with
the aim of examining their performance when all the considered factors are pooled together.
Among the 17 variables that were statistically significant in the benchmark sample, all but three
– Regime, Academic, and Civil Status – remained associated with the level of trust in presidents. In
other words, the relationship between the variables included in the models and legislators’ trust
in presidents holds under different specifications. Furthermore, the results suggest that factors
capturing the institutional distribution of power, the political context, and presidents’ personal
characteristics (psychological and non-psychological) should all be integrated to reach a
thorough understanding of the level of trust in presidents.
In contrast to 5.1, models 5.2 and 5.3 reveal that several variables lose statistical significance,
suggesting that these are sensitive to model specification. Interestingly, among the seven
variables that were statistically significant across all samples, only Openness to Experience remained
significant across all models, suggesting that this personality trait has a robust relationship with
the trust that legislators have in presidents.
We conducted joint F-tests (presented at the bottom of Table 5) to compare the variance in the
dependent variable as explained by the distribution of power among branches and contextual
variables (on one side), and by biographical and psychological aspects (on the other). Models 5.1
and 5.2 show that factors related to the personal characteristics of leaders have more explanatory
power than do the institutional and contextual factors, while this relationship is reversed in 5.3.
The joint F-tests strongly support the idea that an approach centered on the context in which
interbranch relations take place needs to be complemented by the personal characteristics of the
presidents if we want to attain a full understanding of what best explains the trust that legislators
have in presidents.
Table 5. Legislative Trust in Presidents: Integrated Models
(5.1)
(5.2)
(5.3)
Lower Chamber
President’s Party
Other Parties
Support for President
1.65***
7.30***
(0.64)
(2.13)
Number of Parties
-0.36***
-1.08***
0.05
(0.07)
(0.26)
(0.34)
Regime
-0.11
1.89***
0.74***
(0.10)
(0.51)
(0.25)
Votes
0.06***
-0.13***
0.01
(0.01)
(0.02)
(0.03)
17
Coalition
1.32***
0.47
(0.27)
(1.38)
Prior Legislature
0.18*
2.73***
-0.08
(0.11)
(0.33)
(0.31)
Illegal Movements
1.24***
-1.61
0.44
(0.20)
(1.16)
(0.68)
Entrepreneur
1.73***
-1.71**
0.60
(0.35)
(0.76)
(0.80)
Political Experience
-0.37***
0.18
(0.07)
(0.21)
Academic
0.08
0.48
(0.20)
(1.01)
Political Socialization
1.10***
-1.11**
(0.19)
(0.55)
Fundamentalist
-2.96***
-3.33**
(0.52)
(1.49)
First Child
-1.02***
0.72
(0.18)
(0.57)
Birth Order
-0.18***
(0.06)
Civil Status
0.14
-1.18
(0.18)
(0.74)
Agreeableness
0.68***
-1.36
(0.23)
(1.22)
Openness
0.62***
-4.08***
0.98*
(0.16)
(0.86)
(0.51)
GDP Per Capita
-0.56*
-0.55
(0.29)
(0.43)
Imprisoned
-0.69
(1.01)
Extroversion
-0.77
(0.68)
Conscientiousness
2.44***
-1.33
(0.85)
(1.00)
Neuroticism
-0.30
(0.53)
Party Age
-0.02*
(0.01)
Democracy Age
-0.01
(0.01)
Lawyer
0.99*
(0.55)
Country Dummies
✔
✔
✔
N
4126
1397
1846
Pseudo r2
0.06
0.26
0.11
Log Likelihood
-5081
-1140
-2178
Joint F-test (Institutions)
78.57
73.73
29.95
Joint F-test (Individuals)
117.03
84.68
27.79
* p<0.1, ** p<0.05, *** p<0.01
We estimated predicted probabilities to gain a better understanding of how changes in the values
of the statistically significant variables in model 5.1 affect the probabilities that a legislator will
18
have “much” confidence in the president. We center only on “much” because, alongside “quite
a lot,” this was the category most selected among legislators interviewed (33% of respondents).
Furthermore, by expressing an extreme level of trust, legislators who fall into this category
should be the least prone to engage in conflict with the executive branch. Table 6 summarizes
the findings.
Table 6. Predicted Probability of “Much” Trust in Presidents
Variables
Predicted
Probability
Variables
Predicted
Probability
All at their means
0.32
Support for President =.11
0.20
Support for president =.677
0.39
Number of Parties =1.85
0.50
Number of Parties =10.44
0.04
Votes =20.6
0.10
Votes =64.2
0.61
Coalition =0
0.19
Coalition =1
0.47
Prior Legislature =0
0.31
Prior Legislature =1
0.35
Illegal Movements =0
0.28
Illegal Movements =1
0.57
Entrepreneur =0
0.23
Entrepreneur =1
0.63
Political Experience =0
0.59
Political Experience =5
0.18
Political Socialization =1
0.02
Political Socialization =5
0.65
Fundamentalist =1
0.46
Fundamentalist =2
0.04
First Child =0
0.38
First Child =1
0.18
Birth Order =1
0.38
Birth Order =8
0.15
Agreeableness =2.16
0.22
Agreeableness =3.88
0.48
Openness =1.6
0.15
Openness= 4.38
0.50
The extreme values of seven variables show a change of more than 30% in the predicted
probability that a legislator will have “much” trust in presidents. Another interesting trend is
that, for certain variables such as Votes and Entrepreneur, the results differ from the findings
shown in Tables 2 and 3. This suggests that legislators who significantly trust in presidents tend
to value their leaders’ electoral success and entrepreneurial experience, whereas the direction of
that relationship changes when all the legislators’ answers are grouped together.
Among variables that capture interbranch institutional and political dynamics, trust in the
president drops significantly when the number of parties increases, and when the votes that the
president obtained in the first round of their elections decreases. These results connect with
literature that has associated a fragmented legislature and a weak mandate with executive-
legislative conflict and political instability in general. Presidents have difficulties in delivering
policies to a legislature that groups together too many forces, as well as when they do not enjoy
much popular support.
19
Three biographical characteristics of presidents also are relevant to explain strong variations
among legislators who claim “much” confidence in presidents. The reason why legislators seem
to invest so much trust in an entrepreneur is unclear, but we suspect that part of the explanation
is that entrepreneurs may have a reputation for getting things done and being capable negotiators
(and being therefore willing to compromise with Congress). We believe that in-depth interviews
with legislators could bring greater clarity to this finding. The results for Political Experience and
Political Socialization are also puzzling, as one would expect an experienced politician to perform
better in office, causing legislators to trust in them more. However, it may be that politicians
who have held formal positions do not enjoy a favorable reputation among their peers. Political
Socialization has the opposite effect; presidents who were more socialized in politics before
reaching office enjoy higher levels of trust. In the sample, this variable had a correlation of only
0.23 with Political Experience, which means that leaders who enter politics at an early stage of their
lives did not necessarily hold more political positions. Nevertheless, presidents who engaged in
politics at an early stage in their lives may enjoy strong connections with other members of the
political elite, some of whom might be in the legislature. As with Political Experience, in-depth
interviews with legislators would probably help to unveil the causal mechanisms that inform this
finding. Finally, among these variables, Fundamentalist shows that being even “partially” radical
in terms of religiosity means a significant loss of trust in a president (from 46% when the leader
is not a fundamentalist to 4%). We are unsurprised by this result: radicalism is unlikely to
generate trust among actors who have traditionally been depicted as highly rational individuals.
Finally, Openness to Experience is the personality trait that explains most of the predicted variation
in levels of trust in presidents, and this result connects with the literature that has associated
openness to experience with better performance in the presidency.
Conclusion
We have taken advantage of two unique databases to conduct an exploratory analysis of the
causes that explain the level of trust that legislators have in their presidents. Three general lessons
emerge from the empirical analysis conducted. One is that the literature that has identified
variables to explain executive-legislative conflict has proven to be a useful reference in explaining
levels of legislative trust. The results endorse our assumption that executive-legislative conflict
and levels of interbranch trust should go hand-in-hand. Second, we showed that a holistic
20
approach is necessary to understand the trust that legislators claim to place in their presidents.
We found that factors that capture the institutional and political environment in which executive-
legislative relations take place, as well as variables that measure psychological and non-
psychological characteristics of the leaders, are relevant to understanding the trust that legislators
have in presidents. Third, our research touches on a dimension that needs to be urgently
addressed: the importance of interpersonal relations among political elites (for a discussion, see
Arana, 2018b). While the formal structure, composition, and powers of both the legislative body
and the presidency are key to understanding interbranch relations, such relations are also shaped
by intensive interactions among the elites populating both branches of power. We believe that
it is time to begin unearthing the importance of these interactions, and that this chapter takes an
initial step toward that goal.
Still, the exploratory nature of this chapter suggests that certain basic, pressing questions need
to be addressed in further research. We have identified factors that explain legislative trust in
presidents, but more research is required to uncover the mechanisms that explain causal
relationships. Furthermore, since interpersonal trust is dynamic (i.e. it varies over time), further
research should address the factors that explain variations in levels of trust. For example, does a
president who proves to be combative and unwilling to make concessions lose the trust of
legislators? Do changes in the country’s economic performance or the president’s popularity
affect how much trust legislators have in presidents?
In this chapter, we have also assumed that the trust that legislators place in presidents should be
correlated to levels of executive-legislative conflict. Further research should explore this relation,
and especially how each relates to the other. For instance, under what circumstances can levels
of trust mitigate or exacerbate executive-legislative conflict, and when can executive-legislative
relations affect the level of trust in a head of government? Furthermore, can one of these
variables change without affecting the other?
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