Abstract

This article develops an analytic framework to explain the power-concentrating or power-sharing qualities of the institutions of government created in a constitution-making process. It argues that, within some general options of design, the different systems of distributing power between government and opposition can be explained in terms of three causal factors: the electoral expectations of the actors, the resources and strategies that determine their bargaining power, and the procedural rules under which constitutions are made. This framework is used to explain the different constraints that the constitutional reform of 1994 in Argentina placed on the structure of presidential powers in this country as well as to understand, more generally, the logic of constitutional change in Latin America.