Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits

3. Continuismo in Comparison: From a Few More Years to a Presidency for Life

3 Continuismo in Comparison: From a Few More Years to a Presidency for Life The previous chapter demonstrated that the majority of democratic regimes, as well as many non- and partly democratic regimes, restrict the tenures of their presidents, especially after the end of the Cold War. Many leaders throughout history, however, were able to circumvent constitutional provisions on re-election. When the scheduled time for departures looms and the most powerful politicians confront the necessity to honor their constitutions, third term debates come to dominate national political agendas. In some countries such extensions are so salient and controversial that the attempts to remain in office or the supporters thereof even receive their own labels: throughout Latin America the former are often dubbed “continuismo”; in Bolivia they are referred to as “prorroguismo”; throughout the post-Soviet region as “tretij srok” (a third term — which does not necessarily imply only a third one); in Niger the supporters were referred to as “tazartchistes” after the Hausa word “tazartche,” “prolongation”; and in Uganda it came to be known as “ekisanja.” What is tenure extension and what is departure from power? Under certain circumstances, the answers to these seemingly simple questions are not always obvious. The first section of this chapter, How to Define Tenure Extension, begins with a description of difficulties in defining what constitutes departure from power, as demonstrated by the examples of Presidents Álvaro Obregón (1920–24) of Mexico, Rafael Trujillo (1930–38 and 1942–52) of the Dominican Republic and Vladimir Putin (2000–) of Russia, who all formally stepped down from the office yet retained control over the executive. However, such cases usually 47 48 Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits prove to be the exception to the rule as the predominant majority of presidents are more unequivocal in whether they prefer to stay or go. The strategies to extend one’s rule are diverse, and some of them can be quite opaque in order to disguise prolongations in power. A tenure extension is conceptually different from an additional presidential election to follow — re-election that the incumbent presidents predominantly win, as I explain in the last section of this chapter, Incumbency, Re-election, and Term Limits. Such an extension may indeed usher in a new election for which the sitting president becomes eligible, but it can also lengthen the existing term, or grant a number of additional years ad hoc, or postpone elections for a considerable period of time — without holding elections. Examining relevant articles in the national constitutions and court decisions, examples of which can be found in the appendix to this book, I classify and explain ten discernable ways that the presidents of the world employ in The Menu of Staying in Power section — from promulgating a new constitution and simultaneously discarding time already served under the previous one, to lengthening the term, to instituting a Presidency for Life, for example. Having established how rulers attempt to remain in office, in the Constraints on Executive Capacity section I turn to the question of what obstacles they have to overcome and what can hinder them. Simply put, a tenure extension is when an individual president is, for whatever reason, permitted — usually through a constitutional change but often through an act of a constitutional court or parliament, or even on an ad hoc basis — to serve longer time than was prescribed at the time of his election into office. A longer time is whenever a president is able to stay in office for at least one additional year or more than the longest constitutionally permitted time (to exclude very short-term mandates’ differences due to discretionary electoral timing). In practice, presidential extensions usually imply at least one extra term or more. This definition resonates with the classical one proposed by Russell Fitzgibbon in his explanation of tenure extensions, the so-called continuismo, in Central America (1940): “the practice of continuing the administration in power in a Latin American country by the process of a constitutional amendment, or a provision in a new constitution, exempting the president in office ... from the historic and frequent prohibition against two consecutive terms in office. The precise form of the constitutional change may vary — the general pattern is simple and uniform.”1 Continuismo in Comparison 49 How to Define Tenure Extension As an illustration of the typical options available to a political leader that faces term limits, and of the difficulties...