This research investigates how presidents make decisions when Congress and ministers resist their government agendas in six Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Paraguay). We analyze whether presidents use their powers to issue these administrative decrees to partially implement approved laws and to benefit specific groups of voters or supporters.

This research argues that such behavior is more likely when presidents have government agendas that diverge from the interests of legislators or ministers. When these divergences are accentuated, presidents prefer to act unilaterally, issuing decrees to enforce their positions and broaden political support for their government agenda. This study is relevant, as it demonstrates that presidents influence laws during their approval in Congress as well as afterward, when they alone decide how they should be executed. To measure the degree of presidential particularism, the analysis will initially focus on a sample of autonomous decrees issued by presidents in the countries studied, differentiating among their distributive or regulatory nature, their allocative scope, and the potential beneficiaries. We built a novel dataset on legislative and administrative decrees issued by presidents in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru and Paraguay since 1985.