Our proposal in this article is to analyze the debate on presidentialism, having as central the theme of governability and its relation with the performance of party oppositions in the legislative arena. We argue that the concern with the consolidation of recent democracies has led analysts to privilege governance over the effectiveness of parliamentary opposition. In this way, the evolution of studies and debates about the most appropriate constitutional designs for democratic consolidation has resulted, on the one hand, in the conception that, if effective, parliamentary oppositions can harm the consolidation of new democracies and, on the other, in a lack of empirical research on their prerogatives and behavior. We defend the need to overcome this normative bias and the development of an investigation agenda on its strategic performance, after all, parliamentary oppositions are indispensable actors in the democratic regime.
Parliamentary oppositions; Presidentialism; Governance; Executive and Legislative