Legislative Urgency in Latin America

How does the urgency prerogative affect the negotiation of legislation between the branches? Why, how often, and under what conditions do presidents use emergency authority? When the prerogative is seemingly inconsequential (that is, when missing deadlines has no apparent consequences), why do presidents still use it? Given the procedural aspects linked to emergencies in Chile, are other cases similar to this case?

The emergency authority, which in the United States is known as fast track authority, is limited there to the consideration of Trade Agreements. Under fast track, trade deals are under “expedited legislative procedures,” which suspend ordinary procedures in Congress and, once trade deals reach the floor, require a vote for or against within a short period of time. weather. The discussion in American politics revolves around this procedural consequence. In Latin America, the literature has dismissed the procedural consequences of urgent prerogatives, perhaps because the Latin American constitutions are silent on the matter. But in Chile, as analyzed by Magar, Palanza and Sin (2021), the permanent rules of Congress require a closed rule for the consideration of urgent bills (Soto, 2015).

This research seeks to obtain a better and more detailed understanding of the emergency authority in Latin America, its use, its determinants and its consequences. Its objective is to explain the conditions under which the bills are marked as urgent, the procedural effects of the prerogative and the consequences of the qualification of urgency for the legislative results. It proposes to do this by analyzing the cases of seven individual countries, but also by gaining a comparative perspective.