Abstract

Presidentialism has been long defined as a regime type based on the principle of separation of power. However, most times actual presidential systems have performed on a different basis, closer to concentration rather than separation of power. This is especially the case in most Latin American countries. Ever since Simón Bolívar asserted, as early as 1826, that “the new states of America … need kings with the title of President” (Sondrol 1990, 426), the region has been identified by its propensity toward the accumulation of power in the top executive office. Hyper-presidentialism, as this phenomenon came to be called (Nino 1992), is at odds with the original, U.S. concept of presidentialism, which Woodrow Wilson (1885) defined as “congressional government”—as he argued that Congress was “fast becoming the governing body of the nation.” Such an unexpected evolution was a combination of two factors, one institutional and the other cultural.