Abstract
This study examines how chamber-level voting rules influence compliance with presidential term limits in third-wave democratizers. Using a novel dataset on constitutional amendment voting rules, we analyze how joint voting and split voting shape leaders’ ability to evade term limits, particularly in anocratic regimes. The findings reveal that joint voting facilitates term-limit evasion by aggregating votes across chambers and projecting elite consensus, while split voting acts as a safeguard by enabling opposition to block amendments. These effects are most pronounced in regimes with moderate democratic levels and where the president’s party lacks a two-thirds majority. The results underscore the critical role of procedural rules in consolidating or undermining democratic norms, offering new insights into the interplay between institutional design and authoritarian resilience during democratic transitions.
Keywords
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
