1 CONSTITUTIONAL DESIGN, LEGISLATIVE PROCEDURES AND AGENDA CONTROL IN PRESIDENTIAL SYSTEMS AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF FOUR CENTRAL AMERICAN COUNTRIES IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE By

The thesis covers issues of constitutional design, legislative procedures and agenda control in presidential systems, with specific empirical application to four Central American cases in a comparative perspective. The results relate to the critical view that presidential systems are inherently prone to institutional deadlock, deriving from their rigid constitutional design. My findings suggest that constitutional rules only determine broad parameters of variation, and that greater attention should be paid to the endogenous procedural design of the legislative process of policy approval in the explanation of institutional performance and inter-branch dynamics. The work is comparative and bridges quantitative and qualitative analysis. The data employed are original and allow for an innovative connection between theory-driven hypotheses on the incentives for majority political actors to circumvent ordinary procedures and play strategically employing procedural choices and political outcomes, by assessing the patterns of legislative production. The hypotheses are generated with attention to the degree of aggregation of interests in the decision-making process, as