This paper assesses the extent to which elected power holders informally intervene in the judiciaries of new democracies, an acknowledged but under-researched topic in studies of judicial politics. The paper first develops an empirical strategy for the study of informal interference based on...

This paper focuses on the evolution of the institutional presidency – meaning the cluster of agencies that directly support the chief of the executive – in Argentina and Brazil since their redemocratization in the 1980s. It investigates what explains the changes that have come about...

Though an important function of the Latin American senates, the confirmation of presi-dential nominations has drawn little academic attention. This paper assesses empirically the way in which two Latin American upper chambers – the Argentine and Brazilian sen-ates – made use of their...

Este trabajo intenta evaluar en qué medida el Senado argentino cumplió su papel consti-tucional de contralor del Poder Ejecutivo en torno a los nombramientos del poder judicial entre 1983 y 2007, como también los factores que afectaron el cumplimiento de este rol. Para ello, se analiza el...