Congress and Foreign policy in Lugo's Paraguay

Abstract

Introduction: The article assesses the association between political and institutional factors and the capacity of President Lugo to approve his legislative initiatives, disaggregating the analysis by themes of domestic politics and foreign policy. The objective is to investigate, within the framework of a multiparty presidentialism, the hypothesis of the higher likelihood of the National Congress to approve presidential initiatives in foreign policy when compared to those of domestic politics. Materials and Methods: The empirical analysis covers all the 839 presidential initiatives carried out between 2008 and 2012. We analyse the approval or rejection of each bill. Results: Through a logistic model, we found a president who is strongly constrained by the Legislative in domestic affairs and another with sufficient conditions to approve the foreign policy agenda. Besides, we find that political and economic factors such as popular approval of the president, unemployment and inflation alter the propensity of the legislative initiative of the president to be approved in the Legislative. Discussion: The proof of the thesis of the two presidents in a multiparty presidentialism with a low institutional propensity to the predomination of the president in the legislative process demonstrates the specificity of foreign policy when compared to domestic politics.