INTRODUCTION

In Venezuela the party system has been dominated for most of the democratic era by two, highly disciplined, centrist political parties. Because parties have been so well organized and disciplined, they are important for understanding the nomination process, elections, the behavior of legislators, and even the relative success of interest groups. Scott Mainwaring's analysis of Brazil illustrates how the apparently significant, formal powers of the president can be stymied by the existence of multiple, undisciplined parties. In Venezuela, the converse is true. Presidents can overcome the relatively sparse formal powers of their office, particularly during majority governments, and interbranch immobilism is rarely a problem. Disciplined parties limit immobilism because majority presidents can almost always count on the support of their parties and because minority presidents are better able to form stable, postelection coalitions. When presidents cannot count on support in Congress, immobilism is still unlikely to result because presidents have virtually no reactive powers with which to thwart the legislature's will and clog the process. A major theme of this volume is that the interaction of constitutionally allocated powers and partisan powers is central to understanding presidentialism in Latin America. In particular, presidential strength is highly conditioned by the partisan composition of the government, which is itself the result of a number of factors including electoral regulations and timing. In Venezuela, party politics, including characteristics internal to the parties themselves and those inherent in the electoral system, affect the president's use of his or her constitutionally allocated powers in a complex and intertwining manner.