Parliamentary and Presidential Democracies: Which One is Best? With the exception of the United States, where a system of separation of executive and legislative powers exists, all countries that are considered to be stable democracies adopt a constitution that is, at least partially, parliamentary. A parliamentary constitution is characterized by the fusion of executive and legislative powers,...

The extent to which groups are involved in the legislative process and legislator decisionmaking is of interest to legislative scholars, but difficult to empirically study because of the private information exchanges between legislator and group. This article exploits a reporting institution in the California state legislature to explore group involvement in the policymaking process and legisla...

What determines the success by which heads of government can enact their legislative proposals? Presumably, constitutional rules governing the relationship between executives and legislatures should be part of the answer. We suggest that in order to understand an executive’s leverage in legislative bargaining, one must consider a broad set of formal powers, even those that are not directly rela...