Cross-avenue politics: The case of Colombia and Brazil

The goal of this dissertation was to show that the concept of cross-avenue politics is useful to understand the real balance of power between branches in presidential systems. While most studies look at the statutory avenue in isolation, the three papers in this dissertation are an attempt to show the significant effect of the interrelation of the different avenues available over the policy-making process. I have focused in particular on how weakening executive decree power affects statutory politics; and on how entrenching more policy in the constitution affects statutory (and decree) politics in Brazil and Colombia.;My results suggest that these reactive assemblies are more powerful when looking at cross avenue politics, even in presidential systems which have usually been considered to have the most dominant presidents of the region. Further research is required to analyze how these interrelation plays with other mechanisms such as referendums, and how does this influence translate into policy outcomes.