Ideological distance and the trap of blackmail potential: structural factors of government coalition formation in Latin America

Conventional wisdom on the redundancy of coalitions under presidentialism is refuted by political systems in Latin American countries. Earlier studies confirmed that coalition formation process was not directly influenced by political system design, but rather by the characteristics of political parties and institutions that ensure their interaction within the system. The article examines the phenomenon of party coalitions in Latin American presidential and semi-presidential systems on the sample of 11 multiparty consolidated systems (Argentina, Bolivia,   Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay). The study was aimed to assess the impact of structural factors on government coalition formation at the country and party levels. The necessary conditions analysis (NCA) and the fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) identified necessary conditions and sufficient configuration of coalition building at the country level with typical and deviant cases located and qualitatively described. Logistic regression analysis modeled the probability of individual parties joining a coalition. The 215 party-level observations included political parties, which participated in the national elections of the last two electoral cycles (2017–2019 and 2021–2024) and crossed the threshold of 1% of seats. The study confirmed the hypotheses on the relationship between political party's coalition membership and its structural and positional characteristics, proved the   significance of ideological distance from the president, identified the critical seat threshold in the lower chamber and compared the counter-directional influence of the coalition and blackmail potentials of parties on the likelihood of joining the coalition.

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