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The Politics of Presidential Term Limits
Alexander Baturo (Editor)

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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/05/19, SPi
T H E P O L I T IC S O F P R E SI D E N T IA L
TERM LIMITS
The Politics of
Presidential Term
Limits
Edited by
A L E X A N D E R BAT U R O
and
R O B E RT E L G I E
1
1
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Contents
List of Figures ix
List of Tables xi
List of Contributors xiii
1. Presidential Term Limits 1

Alexander Baturo and Robert Elgie
SE C T IO N I
2. Theorizing Presidential Rotation 19
Peter Stone
3. One Size Does Not Fit All: The Provision and Interpretation
of Presidential Term Limits 37
Tom Ginsburg and Zachary Elkins
4. Term Limits and the Unconstitutional Constitutional
Amendment Doctrine: Lessons from Latin America 53
David Landau, Yaniv Roznai, and Rosalind Dixon
5. Continuismo in Comparison: Avoidance, Extension,
and Removal of Presidential Term Limits 75
Alexander Baturo
SE C T IO N I I
6. Presidential Term Limits in Latin America: c.1820–1985103
Leiv Marsteintredet
7. Presidential Term Limits as a Credible-Commitment
Mechanism: The Case of Brazil’s Military Regime 123
Octavio Amorim Neto and Igor P. Acácio
8. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Mexico 141
Joseph L. Klesner
9. Presidential Term Limits in Nicaragua 159
David Close
10. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Tunisia 179
Alessandra Bonci and Francesco Cavatorta
vi Contents
11. Presidential Term Limits in Togo: Electoral Accountability

Postponed199
John R. Heilbrunn
12. Presidential Terms in Kazakhstan: Less is More? 221
Dmitry Nurumov and Vasil Vashchanka
13. China: Limiting and Regularizing Top Political Power 247
Zhengxu Wang and Anastas Vangeli
14. Term Limits and Succession in Dictatorships 269
Natasha Ezrow
SE C T IO N I I I
15. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Malawi 291
Peter VonDoepp
16. Should I Stay or Should I Go? Term Limits, Elections, and
Political Change in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia 311
Nic Cheeseman
17. Senegal (1970–2016): Presidential Term Limit Reforms
Never Come Alone339
Charlotte Heyl
18. Presidential Term Limits in Burkina Faso 363
Sophia Moestrup
19. The Uses and Abuses of Presidential Term Limits in Russian
Politics385
Paul Chaisty
SE C T IO N I V
20. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in the United States 405
Michael J. Korzi
21. Presidential Term Limits in Europe 429
Robert Elgie
22. Term Limits in South Korea: Promises and Perils 451
Fiona Yap
23. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Argentina 473
Mariana Llanos
24. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Central America:
Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras 495
Juan Muñoz-Portillo and Ilka Treminio
Contents vii
25. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Latin America:

From Re-democratization to Today 517
José Antonio Cheibub and Alejandro Medina
26. Presidential Term Limits in Bolivia 535
David Doyle
SE C T IO N V
27. Presidential Term Limits and the International Community 557
Christina Murray, Eric Alston, and Micha Wiebusch
28. Effects of Presidential Term Limits 585
Akisato Suzuki
29. What Have We Learned about Presidential Term Limits? 607
Index 623
List of Figures
3.1 Maximum term length (term length × term limit) 40

3.2 Variation in kinds of term limits over time 42
3.3 Term limits in and outside Latin America over time 44
5.1 When do presidents carry out continuismo?88
5.2 How continuismo ends 90
5.3A Presidential continuismo, 1945–2017 93
5.3B Presidential continuismo, 1945–2017 94
6.1 Development of models for presidential term limits in Latin
America c.1820–1985107
7.1 Durability of authoritarian regimes (1946–2010) 124
7.2 Durability of military regimes (1946–2010) 124
7.3 Weighted vs non-weighted tension events per year (1946–85) 131
7.4 Weighted total of tension events related to presidential succession
vs. total score per year (1964–1985) 132
7.5 Brazil’s gross domestic product growth (1960–90) 136
19.1 Predicted probability that opponents/supporters of stricter term
limits agreed with the statement: “The protest meetings in Moscow
and other cities against the results of the December 2011 elections
to the State Duma were justified.” 397
25.1 Classification of presidential term limit regimes in Latin America,
1946–2016524
25.2 Proportion of Latin American countries by presidential reelection
rules, 1946–2016528
28.1 Conditional average marginal effects on the probability of the onset
of repression598
28.2 Predicted probability of the onset of repression 598
28.3 Conditional average marginal effects on the severity of repression 599
List of Tables
4.1 Recent judicial decisions on term limits in Latin America 57

4.2 Modes of judicial intervention on term limits 59
5.1 Continuismo87
5.2 How long presidents remain in office after continuismo89
5.A Presidential continuismo, 1945–2017 95
6.1 Presidential term limits in Latin America, c.1820–1985106
6.2 Presidential term lengths in Latin America, c.1820–1985109
6.3 Democracy and presidential term limits in Latin America, c.1820–1985115
7.1 Presidential terms and violations in Brazil 128
7.2 Typology of military crises 132
8.1 Mexico: Basic information on term limits 143
9.1 Term limits in Nicaraguan constitutions 161
10.1 Information about presidential term limits in Tunisia 181
11.1 Information about presidential term limits in Togo 202
12.1 Information about presidential term limits in Kazakhstan 226
13.1 Paramount leaders and head of State Post Holders in China, 1949–present250
15.1 Basic information about term limits in Malawi 292
16.1 Term limit provisions in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia 314
16.2 The fate of term limits in Kenya, Uganda, and Zambia 321
16.3 The impact of incumbency on African election outcomes 330
17.1 Reforms of presidential term limit and term length rules (1963–2016) 342
18.1 Changes (actual and intended) to presidential term limits and length
in Burkina Faso 366
19.1 Presidential term lengths and term limits in the Russian Constitution 387
19.2 Percentage of respondents who agreed or disagreed with the statement:
“The President of Russia should not hold this office for more than
two terms in total.” 395
19.3 Percentage of party voters who agreed or disagreed with the statement:
“The President of Russia should not hold this office for more than
two terms in total.” 395
19.4 Percentage of supporters/opponents of stricter term limits who agreed
or disagreed with the statement: “The protest meetings in Moscow and
other cities against the results of the December 2011 elections to
the State Duma were justified.” 397
xii List of Tables
20.1 Summary of rules on presidential terms in the US 406

21.1 Summary of rules relating to presidential term limits and lengths
in Europe 430
22.1 Summary of legislation regarding presidential term, South Korea 453
23.1 Presidential term limits in Argentina 477
23.2 Presidential terms in Argentina. Full and restricted democracies
(1916–2015)488
24.1 Presidential term limits in four Central American democracies 496
24.2 Description of presidential term limits in Central American
constitutions, 1839–2015498
25.1 Term limit regimes in Latin America, 1946–2016 525
25.2 Change in term limit regimes by regime type and regime events 530
26.1 Constitutions and term limits in Bolivia (1826–78) 539
26.2 Individual-level determinants of support for the extension of term limits 546
26.3 Democratic attitudes and support for the extension of term limits 548
28.1 Existing empirical findings and tentative hypotheses on effects
of term limits 587
28.2 Analysis of change in the composition of expenditure 594
28.3 Analysis of the onset and the severity of repression 597
28.4 Analysis of MID reciprocation 601
List of Contributors
Alexander Baturo is Associate Professor of Government, Dublin City

University, Ireland. His research is centered on comparative democratization,
leadership, and the United Nations. His articles have appeared in such
journals as the Journal of Politics, Comparative Political Studies, British Journal
of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, and Public Choice. His book,
Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits, was published by the Michigan
University Press in 2014, and won the 2015 Brian Farrell prize for the best
book from the Political Science Association of Ireland. He also consults for
the international organizations and NGOs; his research has been cited, inter
alia, in the Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Tages Anzeiger.
Robert Elgie is Paddy Moriarty Professor of Government and International
Studies at Dublin City University, Ireland and a Member of the Royal Irish
Academy (RIA). He has published numerous books, including Semi-
presidentialism: Sub-types and Democratic Performance (2011) and Political
Leadership: A Pragmatic Institutionalist Approach (2018). He has published
in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, British Journal of Political
Science, Political Research Quarterly, and Journal of Democracy. He is the editor
of the journal French Politics, which is published by Palgrave Macmillan. He is
the Review Editor for Government and Opposition. He is the founder and
co-editor with Sona Golder and Shane Martin of the Politics of Institutions
series with Oxford University Press.
Peter Stone is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Trinity College
Dublin. He previously taught at Stanford University and held a Faculty
Fellowship at Tulane University’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs. He
works in contemporary political theory, with particular interest in theories of
justice, democratic theory, rational choice theory, and the philosophy of social
science. He is the author of The Luck of the Draw: The Role of Lotteries in
Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 2011) and the editor of Lotteries
in Public Life: A Reader (Imprint Academic, 2011). His work has appeared in
such journals as Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy
(CRISPP), Economics and Philosophy, the Journal of Political Philosophy, the
Journal of Theoretical Politics, Political Theory, Rationality and Society, Social
Theory and Practice, and Theory and Decision. He currently serves as
Secretary of the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI).
Zachary Elkins is Associate Professor in the Department of Government at the
University of Texas at Austin. He writes on issues of democracy, institutional
xiv List of Contributors
reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in

Latin America. With Tom Ginsburg (University of Chicago), Elkins co-directs
both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded initiative to
understand the causes and consequences of constitutional choices, and the
website constituteproject.org, which provides resources and analysis for
constitutional drafters in new democracies. Elkins earned his BA from Yale
University, an MA from the University of Texas at Austin, and his PhD from
the University of California, Berkeley.
Tom Ginsburg is the Leo Spitz Professor of International Law at the
University of Chicago, where he also holds an appointment in the Political
Science Department. He holds BA, JD, and PhD degrees from the University
of California at Berkeley. His latest book is How to Save a Constitutional
Democracy (2018, with Aziz Huq). With Zachary Elkins (University of Texas),
he co-directs both the Comparative Constitutions Project, a NSF-funded
initiative to understand the causes and consequences of constitutional
choices, and the website constituteproject.org, which provides resources and
analysis for constitutional drafters in new democracies. He is a member of the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences and currently serves a senior advisor
on Constitution Building to International IDEA.
David Landau is the Mason Ladd Professor and Associate Dean for
International Programs at Florida State University College of Law. He holds a
AB, JD, and PhD (in political science) from Harvard University. He works
primarily in the field of comparative constitutional law, with a focus on Latin
America. With Manuel Jose Cepeda Espinosa, he is the author of Colombian
Constitutional Law: Leading Cases (Oxford University Press 2017). He has also
published a number of articles on abusive forms of constitutional change and
term limits, including “Abusive Constitutionalism” in the UC Davis Law
Review, “Populist Constitutions” in the Chicago Law Review, “Transnational
Constitutionalism and a Limited Doctrine of Unconstitutional Constitutional
Amendment” in the International Journal of Constitutional Law (with Rosalind
Dixon), and “Presidential Term Limits in Latin America: Transnational
Constitutional Dialogue as a Double Edged Sword,” forthcoming in Law and
Ethics of Human Rights.
Yaniv Roznai is a Senior Lecturer at the Radzyner School of Law,
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya. He holds a PhD and LLM from The
London School of Economics, and LLB and BA degrees in Law and
Government from the IDC. Yaniv was a Post-Doc Fellow at the Minerva Center
for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, University of Haifa and at the
Hauser Global Law School, New York University, as well as a visiting researcher
at the Program in Law and Public Affair, Princeton University. He is the
Co-Founding Chair of the Israeli Association of Legislation, and former
List of Contributors xv
secretary general of the Israeli Association of Public Law. In 2015, he was

awarded the 2014 Thesis Prize of the European Group of Public Law for his
PhD dissertation. His book, Unconstitutional Constitutional Amendments: The
Limits of Amendment Powers was published in 2017 by Oxford University Press.
Rosalind Dixon is Professor of Law at the University of New South Wales
(UNSW Sydney), Faculty of Law, whose research focuses on comparative
constitutional law and constitutional design, theories of constitutional dialogue
and amendment, socio-economic rights, and constitutional law and gender.
She is on the Council, and is Co-President Elect, of the International Society
of Constitutional Law, and on the Editorial Board of its associated journal, the
International Journal of Constitutional Law; a member of the Gilbert + Tobin
Centre of Public Law; and deputy director of the Herbert Smith Freehills
Initiative on Law and Economics at UNSW. She previously served as an
Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago Law School, and has been a
visiting professor at Harvard Law School, Columbia Law School, the
University of Chicago Law School, and the National University Singapore.
Leiv Marsteintredet holds a PhD in Comparative Politics and is Assistant
Professor at the Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen.
His research focuses on Latin America, in particular topics related to political
institutions, presidential crises, impeachments and falls, and Norwegian
relations with Latin America. Marsteintredet has also done extensive research
on the politics and political institutions of the Dominican Republic. Currently
he is studying the development and history of succession rules and the vice-
presidency in Latin America. He has published in journals such as
Comparative Politics, International Political Science Review, Journal of Latin
American Studies, and Journal of Democracy. He is the editor of Norge i Latin-
Amerika. Forbindelser og forestillinger (Norway in Latin America. Relations
and conceptions) (CappelenDamm Akademisk 2017).
Octavio Amorim Neto is Professor of Political Science at the Brazilian
School of Public and Business Administration (EBAPE) at the Getulio Vargas
Foundation (FGV), Rio de Janeiro. His works have been published in several
international journals. He is the author of Presidencialismo e Governabilidade
nas Américas (2006), and De Dutra a Lula: A Condução e os Determinantes da
Política Externa Brasileira (2011).
Igor P. Acácio is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the University of
California, Riverside. His research interests are civil-military relations,
democratic consolidation, and defense policy. He holds a Master’s degree in
political science from the Institute of Social and Political Studies at State
University of Rio de Janeiro (IESP-UERJ). He is co-author of Atlas da Política
Brasileira de Defesa (2017).
xvi List of Contributors
Joseph L. Klesner is Provost of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. He has

taught political science there since 1985, focusing on comparative politics,
especially of Mexico and Latin America. His research first centered on
Mexican electoral politics, political reform, and opposition party development
as key elements of that nation’s political liberalization. He later turned to
comparative analysis of political participation and public opinion in Latin
America. Supported by Fulbright grants to Mexico, South America, and
Ireland, and by the American Political Science Association and the National
Science Foundation, his articles and book chapters have appeared in journals
such as Comparative Political Studies, Latin American Research Review, Latin
American Politics and Society, and Electoral Studies, among several others,
as well as many edited volumes. His textbook, Comparative Politics: An
Introduction, appeared in 2014.
David Close is Professor of Political Science in the Memorial University of
Newfoundland, Canada. His specialty is Nicaraguan politics, which he has
studied for four decades. He has written, edited, or co-edited several books on
that subject. The most recent of these is Nicaragua: Navigating the Politics of
Democracy, published in 2016.
Francesco Cavatorta is Full Professor in the Department of Political Science
at Laval University in Quebec, Canada. His research focuses on the political
situation of the Middle East and he is currently working on a project
examining the role of political parties in the post-uprisings period. He
recently published the co-edited volume (with Lise Storm) Political Parties in
the Arab World (Edinburgh University Press, 2018).
Alessandra Bonci is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science
at Laval University. Her research focuses on Islamist movements and parties
in the Middle East and North Africa. Her dissertation project deals with the
rise of Salafism in the region.
John R. Heilbrunn teaches international studies at the Colorado School of
Mines. He is also a Research Fellow at Les Afriques dans le Monde (LAM), a
research unit of the Institut d’Études Politiques, Bordeaux. He is a trained
Political Scientist (PhD UCLA 1994) who has worked on a variety of topics
related to development in Africa and the global south. Heilbrunn is the
author of numerous publications on Africa including Oil, Development and
Democracy in Africa (Cambridge University Press, 2014). His current research
addresses Africa’s emerging middle classes and democracy, corruption and
development, and the political economy of the extractive industries in Africa.
In addition to his academic research, Heilbrunn has served as a consultant to
a variety of donors including the World Bank, the OECD, the African
Development Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International
Development, and the United States Agency for International Development.
List of Contributors xvii
Dmitry Nurumov is currently an independent legal expert. He served as

Legal Adviser and Senior Adviser to the OSCE High Commissioner on
National Minorities in the Hague. Prior to that, he worked as the Rule of Law
Coordinator in Central Asia for the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions
and Human Rights. Dmitry also worked for the OSCE Centre in Almaty and
other international organizations. He holds a PhD degree in International
Public Law from Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO).
Vasil Vashchanka (LLM) is an independent researcher and consultant. He
previously worked for the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral
Assistance (Stockholm, Sweden), as well as the OSCE Office for Democratic
Institutions and Human Rights (Warsaw, Poland). He has extensive profes
sional experience in Central Asia through rule of law assistance projects and
election observation.
Zhengxu Wang is Shanghai City’s 1000-Talent Distinguished Professor and
Oriental Scholar Distinguished Professor at the School of International
Relations and Public Affairs Fudan University, China. He obtained his PhD in
political Science from University of Michigan, and subsequently obtained
academic experiences in the National University of Singapore and the UK’s
University of Nottingham, where he served as Associate Professor at its
School of Contemporary Chinese Studies and Senior Fellow and Deputy
Director of its China Policy Institute. He researches on national party and
state institutions and politics in China, especially the politics among top
political elites, citizen values, and political behaviors in China and East Asia,
and institutional changes and political reforms in China, among other topics.
His publications have appeared in Governance, International Review of
Sociology, Political Research Quarterly, Japanese Journal of Political Science,
Contemporary Politics, Asian Journal of Public Opinion Research, The China
Quarterly, The China Journal, Journal of Contemporary China, and others.
Anastas Vangeli is a Doctoral Researcher at the Graduate School for Social
Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw. His research combines
his long-standing interest and knowledge of China, Eastern Europe, and
trajectories of (post)socialist politics in an evolving global context. His latest
publications focus on the normative aspects and cognitive impact of China’s
Belt and Road Initiative, the development and impact of China’s “16 + 1”
cooperation, and other aspects of China-Europe relations, as well as the
dynamics of elite politics in China.
Natasha Ezrow is a Professor of Government at University of Essex, where
she has been working since 2007. Her research focuses on authoritarian
regimes, state failure, corruption, and violent non-state actors. She is the author
of several books on these topics including the forthcoming Democracies and
Autocracies, Violent Non-State Actors, Failed States and Institutional Decay,
xviii List of Contributors
and Dictators and Dictatorships. In addition to research she teaches modules

in Comparative Politics and International Relations. She also consults for the
European Union External Action Service and the United Nations Economic
and Social Commission in Western Asia. Professor Ezrow completed her PhD
from the University of Santa Barbara in 2002.
Peter VonDoepp is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University
of Vermont. His research focuses on African politics, with specific focus on
judicial development and state–media relations. He is author of Judicial
Politics in New Democracies: Cases from Southern Africa (Lynne Rienner,
2009) and co-editor of The Fate of Africa’s Democratic Experiments: Elites and
Institutions (Indiana, 2005). His other published work appears in a variety of
outlets, including Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, and
Comparative Politics. His work has been supported by the National Science
Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Fulbright-Hays program, and Norwegian
Research Council.
Nic Cheeseman (@fromagehomme) is Professor of Democracy at the University
of Birmingham. He mainly works on democracy and elections and has
conducted fieldwork in a number of countries including Ghana, Kenya,
Malawi, Nigeria, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. Some of his publications
based on this research have won prizes, including the GIGA award for the
best article in Comparative Area Studies (2013) and the Frank Cass Award for
the best article in Democratization (2015). Professor Cheeseman is also the
author of Democracy in Africa (2015), Institutions and Democracy in Africa
(2017), How to Rig an Election (2018), and Coalitional Presidentialism in
Comparative Perspective (2018). In addition, he is the founding editor of the
Oxford Encyclopaedia of African Politics, an advisor to Kofi Annan’s African
Progress Panel, and a frequent commentator on African and global events
in outlets such as The Economist, Le Monde, The Financial Times, The
Washington Post, and many more.
Charlotte Heyl is a Research Fellow at the GIGA Institute of African Affairs
in Hamburg, Germany. Her research focuses on processes of democratization,
judicial politics, elections and presidentialism in sub-Saharan Africa. Heyl
earned her doctoral degree in Political Science from the University of
Duisburg-Essen. In her thesis, she analyzed the contribution of constitutional
courts to the democratic quality of elections in Madagascar and Senegal. Her
current research examines the impact of presidential term limit reforms on
political regime development in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa.
The project is funded by the DFG German Research Foundation. Heyl
has conducted field research in Kenya, Madagascar, Mali, Mozambique,
and Senegal. Her work has been published in Comparative Politics and
Democratization.
List of Contributors xix
Sophia Moestrup is the Deputy Director for Central and West Africa at the
National Democratic Institute (NDI), in Washington, DC. She has worked for
NDI since 2005 on the design and implementation of democracy support
programs in the region. Prior to joining NDI, Dr Moestrup spent six years in
Francophone Africa, working for the United Nations in Cameroon, and for
the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) in Niger where she
served as Country Representative. She has been a consultant for the World Bank
on public expenditure management and social accountability issues, authoring
a number of chapters for the World Bank’s Social Accountability Sourcebook.
She has published widely on semi-presidentialism and democratic performance,
including four co-edited volumes with Robert Elgie. She holds BA and MA
degrees in Economics from the University of Copenhagen, and a PhD in
political science from the George Washington University.
Paul Chaisty is the University Lecturer in Russian Government at St Antony’s
College, Oxford University. His publications include Legislative Politics and
Economic Power in Russia (Palgrave, 2006) and (co-author) Coalitional
Presidentialism in Comparative Perspective: Minority Executives in Multiparty
Systems (Oxford University Press, 2018), plus numerous articles in journals
such as Europe-Asia Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Government
and Opposition, Legislative Studies Quarterly, Party Politics, Political Studies,
Political Research Quarterly, and Post-Soviet Affairs. His research interests cover
legislative, party, and interest group politics in post-communist Russia; political
attitudes in Russia; nationalism in Russia and Ukraine; and comparative
presidentialism.
Michael J. Korzi is Professor of Political Science at Towson University in
Maryland, United States. He has published on a variety of topics dealing with
the presidency and presidential politics, including the presidency and public
opinion, presidential signing statements, William Howard Taft’s theory of
presidential leadership, and term limits and voter turnout in presidential
democracies. His book, Presidential Term Limits in American History: Power,
Principles, & Politics, a theoretical and historical survey of the subject,
received the American Political Science Association’s Richard E. Neustadt
Award for the “Best Book on Executive Politics” in 2012.
O. Fiona Yap is Associate Professor of Policy and Governance at the
Australian National University. Her main research interests are on policy and
political economy in East and Southeast Asia, focusing on how strategic
interactions between government and citizens lead to outcomes such as
democratization, peace, and economic development. Her research is available
through journals such as the British Journal of Political Science, Comparative
Political Studies, Journal of East Asian Studies, Journal of Theoretical Politics,
Social Science Quarterly, Korea Observer, Japanese Journal of Political Science,
xx List of Contributors
Asian Survey, Government and Opposition, Journal of Public Policy, and Policy
Sciences. She is co-editor of the European Journal of Development Research,
and editorial board member for Asian Survey, Korea Observer, 21st Century
Political Science Review, and Asia & the Pacific Policy Studies. She is frequent
media commentator, with invitations from ABC (Australia), BBC (UK),
Channel NewsAsia (Singapore), Primetime (Korea), and Morning Wave
Busan (Korea).
Mariana Llanos is a Lead Research Fellow at the GIGA German Institute of
Global and Area Studies, Institute of Latin American Studies, in Hamburg,
Germany, and the head of the Accountability and Participation research
program at the same institution. She has been conducting comparative
research on the political institutions of Latin America, with a special focus on
Argentina and Brazil for many years, and has published several books and
numerous peer-reviewed articles and books. Her most recent research interests
include the institutional presidency, presidential term limits, impeachments
and impeachment threats, and the relationship between courts and the elected
branches. Using a comparative area studies approach, her newest project
examines the impact of presidential term limit reforms on political regime
developments in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. This project is funded
by the German Research Foundation.
Juan Muñoz-Portillo is currently an Affiliated Researcher at the Department
of Politics and International Studies of the University of Cambridge, where he
previously was a Philomathia Post-doctoral Research Associate. He received
his PhD in Politics and International Relations from Dublin City University.
His research focuses on comparative political economy, particularly on pork
barrel politics and clientelism in Central America and causes and consequences
of fiscal austerity policies in the European Union.
Ilka Treminio has a PhD in Political Science. She is the Director of the Costa
Rican Office of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO) and
a Researcher and Professor at the School of Political Science, University of
Costa Rica. Treminio works in the field of institutional reforms, in particular
reforms of presidential re-elections in Latin America. Her most recent
publication analyses issues related to Latin American populism.
José Antonio Cheibub is Professor of Political Science and the Mary Thomas
Marshall Professor of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M University. José Antonio
Cheibub’s research interests are in comparative politics, with a focus on the
emergence and effects of democratic regimes and specific democratic institu
tions. He is the author, co-author, or co-editor of Parliaments and Govern
ment Formation: Unpacking Investiture Rules (Oxford, 2015), Presidentialism,
Parliamentarism, and Democracy (Cambridge, 2007), the Democracy Sourcebook
(MIT, 2003) and Democracy and Development: Political Institutions and
List of Contributors xxi
Well-Being in the World, 1950–1990 (Cambridge, 2000). The latter received the
2001 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award given by the American Political
Science Association for the best book published in the United Stated on
government, politics, or international affairs. He has published in several
edited volumes and in journals such as the American Political Science Review,
World Politics, British Journal of Political Science, Political Science Research and
Methods, Comparative Political Studies, Public Choice, Politics and Society,
Journal of Democracy, Constitutional Political Economy, and Studies in
Comparative International Development.
Alejandro Medina is a graduate student in Political Science at Texas A&M
University.
David Doyle is an Associate Professor of Politics in the Department of
Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow
of St Hugh’s College. He is also a member of the Latin American Centre. His
general research and teaching interests include comparative politics and
comparative political economy, including work on the political economy of
the social contract in Latin America; the relationship between remittances
and political risk; and experimental work on populism. His research has
appeared in journals such as the American Political Science Review, the
Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and Comparative
Political Studies.
Christina Murray is a Senior Adviser on the Standby Team of Mediation
Advisers in the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, and Emeritus
Professor of Human Rights and Constitutional Law at the University of Cape
Town. In 1994 she was elected to the panel of seven experts that advised the
South African Constitutional Assembly. Since then she has combined academic
and practical work on matters relating to constitutionalism, the rule of law, and
democratic institutions. She was a member of the commission that prepared
the current Kenyan constitution and the 2012 Fiji Constitution Commission
and more recently has worked in Yemen, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Libya, and Somalia
among other places. Her recent research focuses on constitution-making
processes and political settlements, and constitutional design.
Eric Alston is a Scholar in Residence in the Finance Division and the
Faculty Director of the Hernando de Soto Capital Markets Program in the
Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado Boulder. He also
serves as a Research Associate with the Comparative Constitutions Project.
Alston’s research and teaching is centered in the fields of law and economics
and institutional and organizational analysis, which he applies to research
questions in the development of rights along frontiers, the design and imple
mentation of constitutions, and questions of legal/institutional transitions
more generally. His outreach and service activities include educational
xxii List of Contributors
materials, instructional workshops, and comparative expertise to constitutional

drafting processes and peace negotiations worldwide, working with organ
izations like International IDEA and the International Development Law
Organization.
Micha Wiebusch is a researcher at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB)
of the University of Antwerp and at the Law Department of the School of
Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. He is also an
associate research fellow at the United Nations University Institute on
Comparative Regional Integration Studies (UNU-CRIS) in Bruges. His research
considers the norms and practices of the African Union on promoting and
protecting democracy, human rights, and constitutionalism in Africa. He has
worked at the African Union Commission in the Department of Legal Affairs
and as a constitutional expert for African Union Election Observation Missions.
Akisato Suzuki is a Max Weber Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of
Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute. He is also
affiliated as a Research Fellow with the Institute for International Conflict
Resolution and Reconstruction, Dublin City University. He obtained his
PhD from Dublin City University in 2015. His research interests include
international/ethnic conflict, leadership, and methodology. His publications
have appeared in Research and Politics, Cooperation and Conflict, International
Politics, the Journal of Development Studies, European Political Science, and
Federal Governance.
Presidential Term Limits

Term limits restrict the time that office holders can remain in a position of
authority. They can apply to any elected representative—deputies, governors,
mayors. They can also apply to unelected officials—central bank governors,
judges, police chiefs. This volume is concerned with such restrictions on the
heads of state—presidents. Presidential term limits are constitutional provisions
that restrict the maximum length of time that presidents can serve in office.
They stipulate the length of term the presidents can serve between elections
and the number of consecutive or non-consecutive terms that are permitted.
The question of term limits affects presidents the world over. It affects presi-
dents in democratic and non-democratic regimes. Even though democracy and
binding term limits generally travel together, the fact is that democracy does
not guarantee that its presidents will be term-limited and non-democracy
does not always imply the lack of binding term limits. It also affects all types of
presidents irrespective of how they are elected to office, whether they are
elected directly as in France, by an electoral college the members of which
are popularly elected as in the US, or whether they are elected indirectly by the
legislature as in Italy.
The question under what conditions incumbent presidents comply with the
constitutional restrictions on term limits is important. When leaders do not
comply, their decisions often provoke political conflict. The outcome of such
conflict may have profound consequences. In 2018, when upon the expiration
of his last term President Sargsyan of Armenia violated his earlier pledge and
attempted to remain in power as prime minister, the country erupted in protests
leading to his resignation and the opposition taking power for the first time.
That said, non-compliance with term limits does not always have to provoke
conflict for it to be significant for regime dynamics. The 2018 removal of presiden-
tial term limits in China was a fait accompli and concerned the least significant
post that the leader of China occupied at the time. The change however signalled
that important principles of its collective leadership were being reconsidered.
2 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits
Similarly, the introduction of a two-term presidential limit in Egypt following

the fall of Mubarak was heralded with universal acclaim at the time. However,
with President Sisi beginning his last four-year term in 2018, the potential
removal of term limits has unavoidably appeared on the political agenda. If
they are removed, it will signal that the regime is heading toward personalism.
How can we study presidential term limits? The institution of term limits
can be understood as the dependent variable, as the explanatory variable, as a
focal point, and as an indicator—a tripwire. We can also think of term limits
as an institution, as a constitutional norm, and as a norm of political behav-
iour. First, we can treat presidential term limits as the dependent variable, as
the outcome to be explained. In practice, this means studying why term limits
are introduced, amended, or abolished. It requires the study of compliance or
non-compliance with presidential term limits and factors behind such behav-
iour. Second, term limits can be approached as the independent variable to
explain various economic or political outcomes. Given term limits are so
strongly endogenous to democracy, the identification of their effects is difficult.
Still, depending on the context, term limits may have direct mechanical effects
(for example, if they are binding, term limits have the direct effect of restricting
the maximum amount of time that political leaders serve in office), and indir-
ect, psychological, or informational effects. Presidential term limits have
indirect effects on the behaviour of presidents who pursue different policies
as a result of their inability to seek re-election, for instance. They may have
informational effects by signalling pending incumbent turnover to potential
challengers. Vice versa, as in the case of the plainly redundant removal of term
limits in China in 2018, the informational effect may be to publicly signal the
leader’s intention to stay in office “forever”. Presidential term limits may also be
understood as a focal point for elite and mass coordination against possible
dictatorial takeover. Finally, and irrespective of whether presidential term
limits can be employed as the independent or dependent variable, they can also
be an important signalling device, a tripwire and a component indicator of
executive constraints. For example, as in the case of the plainly redundant
removal of term limits in China in 2018.1
The issue of presidential term limits as the dependent variable is addressed
throughout the volume when contributors discuss compliance with tenure
restrictions and the determinants thereof. Many chapters, particularly those
dedicated to countries with a long history of presidentialism, also discuss
various effects of presidential term limits. Overall, and particularly because of
a very “tight” relationship between democracy and term limits, we believe that
it is more fruitful to approach the study of presidential term limits by carefully
accounting for the time period, place and context, the power and preferences
of relevant political actors, contingent factors such as the power of precedent or
the role of the first post-independence leaders, inter alia—as in the politics of
presidential term limits.
Presidential Term Limits 3
In this context, this volume asks three main questions: in what ways are
presidents formally restricted in the time they can remain in office; what
restrictions have countries chosen to place on their presidents and why; and
what is the effect of those restrictions, in other words what difference, if any, do
they make?
To begin, this chapter provides some basic information about the politics of
presidential term limits. There are four sections. The first sketches some of the
constitutional choices affecting presidential term limits; the second outlines
the standard argument for and against presidential term limits; the third con-
siders some of the political issues involved in the decision to introduce, abolish,
or amend presidential term limits; the fourth points to some of the likely con-
sequences of presidential term limits.
CHOICES, CHOICES—CONSTITUTIONS
AND PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS
As a constitutional clause, the provision on presidential term limits is typically

found alongside other eligibility requirements for presidential candidates. It is
relatively short and is usually overshadowed by longer and more consequential
provisions on executive–legislative relations that define the nature of presi-
dentialism. As Ginsburg, Melton, and Elkins (2011: 1818) note, the choice of
presidential term limits is a “second-order” constitutional decision. That is to
say, only once a country has chosen to have a president as head of state is the
question of whether limits should be placed on the president’s term in office
raised. Nonetheless, as soon as this first-order decision has been made, the
issue of presidential term limits is necessarily raised. In this second-order
context, constitutional decision makers have to make various choices.
Constitutional decision makers can choose to say absolutely nothing about
term limits. This constitutional silence has the effect of leaving the president’s
term completely unrestricted. The president is faced with no formal obligation
to leave office and any attempt to force the president to step down after a period
of time is totally unjustifiable in the courts. By contrast, constitutional decision
makers can also choose to specify that the president’s term is completely unre-
stricted. For example, they can decide to state explicitly that the president can
be re-elected, while remaining silent about any restrictions on re-election. They
can also say that the incumbent president is ‘president for life’, or they can
introduce a set of restrictions while at the same time exempting the current
incumbent from them, as discussed at length in Chapter 5 on the practice of
continuismo—a term for seeking to change presidential term limits that is
widely used across Latin America but can also be applied to presidents the
world over. These choices have similar but nonetheless different implications.
Complete constitutional silence or simply specifying that the president can be

re-elected means that the absence of term-limit restrictions applies to all presi-
dents, including both current and future incumbents. However, specifying that
there is a president for life refers only to a particular individual or incumbent.
The same is true when a specific person or office holder is exempted from a set
of general term-limit rules. In other words, in these latter two cases the absence
of any restriction on the president is itself restricted to a particular president.
The point remains, though, that the introduction of presidential term limits is
a constitutional choice. There is no obligation to restrict a president’s term in a
constitution. Indeed, as Ginsburg and Elkins show in Chapter 3, in 2016 the
situation wherein there are no term-limit restrictions on the current presiden-
tial incumbent was the second-most common constitutional choice in countries
with a president.
More often than not, though, constitutional decision makers do decide to
include restrictions on the president’s term and in a way that applies to all
presidents. Here, the two most fundamental decisions to be made concern the
length of the president’s term and the number of terms the president can serve
however long those terms may be. As Ginsburg and Elkins again show in
Chapter 3 (Figure 3.1), the modal choice is currently two five-year terms. All
the same, the cross-national variation is huge. For example, Switzerland’s presi-
dent is currently restricted to a single term of one year. By contrast, Ireland’s
president is restricted to two terms of seven years. In short, when constitutional
decision makers choose to specify the length and number of terms that a presi-
dent can serve, they have a range of options to choose from, leading inevitably
to considerable cross-national variation.
In theory, constitutional decision makers can determine a country’s presi-
dential term-limit regime simply by specifying the length of the term and the
number of terms a president can serve. They can choose to remain silent
about everything else. They can, though, choose to provide more detail. For
example, if the president can serve more than one term, can those terms be
served consecutively, or does there have to be a gap between one term and the
next? Even if a president can serve consecutive terms before having to step
down, can the president then return to the office after a period of time away?
If a president is eligible to return to office after a certain period, how long
must the president wait? Does a former president have to wait just a single term
before being eligible to return, or a longer period of time? Constitutional
decision makers can decide to specify any one or more of these provisions.
Again, this leads to great cross-national variation in the specification of presi-
dential term limits.
In a sense, the constitutional aspects of presidential term limits end there.
In another sense, though, other seemingly unrelated constitutional matters
are also germane. The basic issue at stake regarding presidential term limits
concerns who is eligible to be chosen to serve as head of state. If a president is
term-limited and cannot stand for re-election, then the set of people who are
eligible to be chosen as president is being constitutionally restricted. That is to
say, if a president is term-limited, there is at least one person in the populace
who cannot be chosen as president at the next presidential election. Yet, consti-
tution makers can choose to restrict the potential set of presidential candidates
in other ways too. For example, there can be citizenship requirements. Maybe
only people who have been citizens of a country and perhaps for a certain
period of time are eligible to stand. There can be residency or similar require-
ments that can rule out candidates from standing. In the context of presidential
term limits, age requirements often come into play. To stand for election, can-
didates usually have to be above a certain age and sometimes people are no
longer eligible to stand once they have reached a certain age limit. Age limits
are often important in this context because if they are specified in a constitu-
tion, even presidents who do not face term limits will still bump up against an
age-limit restriction at some point. In this context, the manipulation of age
restrictions is often associated with the manipulation of term limits more gen-
erally. In the chapters that follow there is evidence of incumbent presidents not
only manipulating the length and number of terms that they can serve, but also
manipulating the rules relating to age limits and other factors too.
There is a further aspect to the constitutional politics of presidential term
limits. As soon as decision makers choose to specify the rules of presidential
term limits in the constitution, there is the potential for those rules to be
contested in the courts. One example that comes up repeatedly in the chapters
that follow concerns the conditions under which the presidential term-limit
clock can be reset to zero. Typically, this issue arises when a president has
been elected and then at a certain point in the presidency there is a change
of rules regarding term limits. The question is then whether the incumbent
president is bound by the rules of the original term-limit provisions, or the
new ones? In other words, does the change in the rules reset the term-limit
clock? Almost always the change of rules is designed to permit an incum-
bent president to be in office for longer than would originally have been the
case. Whether the president is allowed to do so is a question that has often to
be settled in the courts, meaning that the relationship between the president
and the courts can be a key factor in the constitutional politics of presidential
term limits.
Overall, the politics of presidential term limits is bound up with a set of
constitutional choices. This means that the analysis of presidential term limits
involves consideration of the politics of constitutional assemblies, constitu-
tional amendments, and often legislative politics in that regard, as well as
constitutional interpretation and the courts. In this way, while the issue of
presidential term limits may seem somewhat narrow, it raises concerns that
have very broad implications for the study of political systems, including party
politics generally.
THE PROS AND CONS OF PRESIDENTIAL

TERM LIMITS
There are plenty of reviews of the basic pros and cons of presidential term limits
already available (Baturo 2014; Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003: 313–24;
Carey 2014; Dulani 2011; Ginsburg, Melton, and Elkins 2011; Maltz 2007; Venice
Commission 2018). In Chapter 2 of this volume, Peter Stone addresses some of
the normative issues raised by term limits generally, including presidential
term limits. Given this material, the aim here is not to provide an exhaustive
overview of the supposed costs and benefits of presidential term limits. Instead,
two fundamental issues are signalled because they come up again and again in
the country case studies that follow.
As Baturo (2014: 45) puts it, “the debate about term limits is the trade-off
between the possibility of dictatorial takeover and restriction of democratic
choice.” At bottom, the basic fear is that in the absence of term limits presidents
will behave undemocratically, even tyrannically. Some presidents may come
to office with the aim of remaining in power for as long as they can, perhaps
purely for the intrinsic reward of office, or to realize certain political prefer-
ences, or for the potential for the aggrandizement of themselves, their family,
or supporters. The absence of term limits helps such presidents to achieve this
ambition by facilitating ongoing access to state resources, helping to ensure an
incumbency advantage over political opponents, and providing a guarantee of
legal immunity from prosecution for wrongdoing in office (Halff 2016: 7). Thus,
there is a basic fear that a president who comes to power with the desire to
remain in office will use the material and political advantages associated with
the absence of term limits to achieve their ambition, and typically at the cost of
democracy. There is, though, a further fear, namely that those material and
political advantages will themselves create the incentive for a president to want
to remain in office, even if that motivation was not present at the time of the
president’s election itself. In other words, the absence of term limits can be
instrumental both in ensuring an already dictatorially minded president can
achieve their ambition and also in encouraging a previously well-minded
president to start to behave dictatorially. In this context, the presence of term
limits is beneficial because it can act as a check on presidents with dictatorial
ambitions and discourage others from assuming them, reducing the prospect
of undemocratic or tyrannical behaviour.
The problem with this line of reasoning is that the presence of presidential
term limits can itself be interpreted as undemocratic. As noted previously, term
limits are designed to reduce the pool of candidates available for the presi-
dency, even if perhaps by only one candidate. Yet if that candidate is popular, or
effective, or widely supported for some other reason, then term limits perhaps
unnecessarily and even unfairly restrict the choice available to those in the
selection process, which in the case of presidential and semi-presidential
regimes is the people generally, and in the case of parliamentary regimes is

usually the elected representatives of the people. Thus, presidential term limits
can be considered undemocratic because they frustrate the popular will. In
Chapter 25 of this volume, Cheibub and Medina criticize the institution of
term limits as too blunt and too crude an instrument that makes electoral
accountability impossible by taking away the re-election possibility from term-
limited presidents.
There is another very common variant of this argument (Bueno de Mesquita
et al. 2003: 314). Here, the mechanism is psychological. Presidents who are
not term-limited have an incentive to respond to the will of the people. This
is the rational way for them to win re-election. However, if re-election is
barred because of term limits, then presidents no longer have the same incentive.
According to this line of reasoning, presidential term limits are again undemo-
cratic, because they disconnect the president from the source of popular
legitimacy in the polity at least in the president’s last term of office if there is
more than one.
There is no metric to judge the relative merit of these normative arguments.
Nonetheless, the international community has made a choice between them.
As Ginsburg, Melton, and Elkins (2011: 1819) have put it, in “the modern consid-
eration of term limits, the themes of preventing tyranny and protecting elect-
oral competition have come to the fore”. Specifically, the Venice Commission
(2018: 16), which provides advice to governments on constitutional matters, has
reported that a “review of international treaties, national constitutions and
judicial decisions shows that re-election is not conceived as a human right”.
More than that, they state that the Commission “has taken a positive view on
limiting the mandates of presidents” (ibid.: 10). To reach that conclusion, they
drew directly on what might be called the argument from tyranny, stating that
“the regular change of office holder through the process of election is the very
method to prevent too strong a concentration of powers in the hands of the
President” (ibid.: 11). For the purposes of this volume, this judgement suggests
that unless otherwise noted, attempts to introduce term limits should be inter-
preted positively in terms of a gauge of democratic performance, and plans to
abolish or restrict them should be considered negatively. This also suggests that
when presidents use the language of democracy to justify the abolition or
restriction of term limits, they are invariably doing so hypocritically. They are
masking an undemocratic ambition to remain in power behind the language of
democratic governance.
The question of compliance with democratic norms, such as the norm of
regular departure from power after electoral loss or due to term limits, is one
of the central questions in the scholarship on democratic consolidation
(Przeworski 2005). It is also one of the most difficult to answer because it is
hard to model the contingent factors that affect the calculations of incumbent
leaders contemplating the loss of political power, often for the first time, in
countries with no history of peaceful incumbent turnover (Przeworski 2015).

Repeated compliance with presidential term limits habituates, or “routinizes”
political elites to democratic institutions and norms. Such compliance also
strengthens the idea that existing norms and institutions are more valuable
than the identities of individual presidents, even if the latter are perceived as
indispensable and popular at the time of their compulsory departures from
power. It is true that presidential term limits may be undemocratic by taking the
choice away from the democratic majority and by preventing capable incum-
bents from running from office, as Cheibub and Medina warn in Chapter 25.
Furthermore, in Chapter 22 Yap hypothesizes that low levels of trust in gov-
ernment and in democracy overall in South Korea may be partly due to a single
presidential term in place as well as constant gridlock and conflict in policy-
making, in turn partly caused by legislators’ willingness to challenge perpetually
lame-duck presidents.
South Korea’s single presidential term is understandable, however, given this
country’s previous history of strongmen and non-democratic rule. Similarly,
many contemporary democracies that impose single presidential terms on
their leaders, such as Mexico or the Philippines, do so following an equally
disastrous experience with “exceptional” leaders in the past. For these coun-
tries, maintaining the norm of a single-term rule has intrinsic value and may be
more important that any possible policy or accountability improvements. It is
also debatable whether or not the option of single re-election can conceivably
improve policymaking or democratic accountability or whether perceived
deficiencies would have persisted irrespective of presidential re-election or the
lack thereof.
THE INTRODUCTION, AB OLITION, AND

AMENDMENT OF PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS
Changes to term limits can be observed when a constitution is amended. These

changes can take the form of the wholesale introduction or abolition of presi-
dential term limits, or amendments to existing provisions, strengthening or
weakening term-limit rules. While there are many examples of such changes in
the chapters that follow, there is a further scenario that needs signalling. Term-
limit rules are often amended as part of a wider package of constitutional
reforms, indeed sometimes as part of the passage of a completely new constitu-
tion. This is at least partly because there is now an international norm that
presidential term limits are an integral part of a democratic rule of law system,
as the comments of the Venice Commission in the previous section demon-
strated. In this context, presidents can be reluctant simply to abolish term limits
as it can generate criticism from the international community, including donors.
Instead, they often prefer to bundle the abolition of term limits into a much
wider package of constitutional reform. While the abolition of term limits will
still be noted by the international community, attention will be focused on
many other issues too, thus diluting the overall impact of the particular reform.
Indeed, as part of the wider constitutional package, presidents may introduce
other reforms that can genuinely be framed as ‘democratic’. For instance, they
may choose to introduce a directly elected second chamber of parliament at the
same as term limits are being abolished (Baturo and Elgie 2018). In this scen-
ario, the democratic nature of the upper-chamber reform helps to take the
steam out of the criticisms of the undemocratic nature of the term-limit reform.
Thus, while changes to term limits are always constitutional events, it is import-
ant to place those events in context, teasing out the underlying motivations
for the change.
Whatever form the change may take and whatever the motivations for it
might be, the decision to introduce, reform, or abolish term limits is necessarily
endogenous to the preferences of political actors. Put differently, presidential
term limits do not choose themselves. They are chosen by the people who will
subsequently be operating under them, sometimes by presidents themselves
in personalist regimes or in regimes on the road toward personalism. The
endogenous selection of institutions is a standard problem for institutional
analysis (Carey 2000). It poses particular problems for the study of the effects
of institutional variation (see ‘The Effect Of Presidential Term Limits’). Yet, it
also raises issues in the study of institutional choice too.
In democracies where the rule of law is absolute, the presence of some form
of presidential term limit is almost taken for granted. For sure, as Elgie shows
in Chapter 21 on Europe, there are still some countries where democracy and
the rule of law apply, but where for historical reasons presidential term limits
are absent. In most instances, though, the presence of a consolidated democ-
racy, a system of institutional checks and balances, a functioning rule of law,
and both the presence of and respect for presidential term limits go hand in
hand. Yet, this situation also means that the presence or choice of term limits is
difficult to separate from the presence or choice of democracy itself. For example,
when countries in Central and Eastern Europe democratized in the early
1990s with a view to joining the family of democracies in the European Union,
they all adopted presidential term limits as a matter of course. They were simply
part of a broader democratic and constitutional package that they embraced.
For sure, individual countries still had particular choices to make—should the
president serve for four or five years, be limited to one or more terms, and so on.
Nonetheless, in democracies, except in cases where long-term historical reasons
remain salient, the basic choice of some form of presidential term-limit regime
is simply part of the normative fabric of institutional life.
The opposite is true in personalist autocracies. In this type of undemocratic
system, where the system of checks and balances is absent or at least is a façade,
and where the rule of law is not properly upheld, the choice of presidential term
limits is equally difficult to distinguish from the wider characteristics of the
personalist regime. Here, even if term limits exist on paper, they will not be
upheld in practice. In this situation, as in democracies, the choice of term limits
is determined by the personalist nature of the broader regime.
This leaves a third category of counties where either democracy is present
but fragile or where autocracy is present but in the context of a certain pluralist
system in which leaders have to take account of opposing forces. In these coun-
tries, the choice of term limits and the specific form of term-limit regime is
important and not least as a signal of the democratic health of the country.
Here, the presence of term limits may act as a check on any personalist propen-
sities in the system. It may encourage political competition and participation
with the governing party; it may also provide an incentive for the opposition to
stay within the rule of law when faced with the prospect of an election at some
point in the future that might be winnable. In addition, if the particular term-
limit regime allows for a three- or four-year presidential term and no re-election
or re-election only once, then the temporal horizons of actors in the system are
relatively short, again perhaps encouraging participation within the bounds of
the rule of law. By contrast, in these cases the abolition of presidential term
limits can also be a signal that democracy has in effect collapsed and that a
personalist regime has taken its place (Baturo 2014: 5).
The lesson is that the choice of term-limit regime is always endogenous to
the wider political system and the preferences of the actors in that system. This
means that in democracies the presence of term limits is simply one of the
many signs that there is a well-functioning system of checks and balances.
Equally, in personalist regimes the absence of term limits, or at least their
unenforceability is one of the many signs that there is no effective system of
checks and balances. In young democracies and quasi-democracies, though,
the choice of term-limit regime can be a signal of the health a regime and the
nature of political competition in a system. In these regimes, it is important to
play close attention to the details of presidential term limits. Their presence can
be a sign that the democracy is still functioning. Their abolition or avoidance
through outright constitutional manipulation is usually the signal that a
personalist or an authoritarian regime with personalist elements has emerged
or is emerging.
In every country chapter, volume contributors discuss the rate of compliance
with presidential term limits. It ranges from a near universal compliance as in
the United States (albeit compliance with tradition, not the constitutional
norm until 1951, as discussed by Korzi in Chapter 20) or in Costa Rica (in
Muñoz-Portillo and Treminio’s Chapter 24) to zero compliance as in Togo or
Tunisia (Bonci and Cavatorta, and Heilbrunn in Chapters 10 and 11). The major-
ity of country chapters place “their” compliance in between these extremes.
Doyle writes in Chapter 26 on Bolivia that for many (but far from all) Bolivian
leaders, term limits have been something to reform and to attempt to alter and
suit their political purpose from the moment they assume office.
How widespread is non-compliance? For many presidents the problem of
compliance with term limits does not arise if they fail to reach the end of their
terms (Pérez-Liñán 2007). It is arguably more informative to estimate the ratio
of “extenders” among those who complete their terms and who either comply
with their constitutions and depart from office, or not. We do not have full data
on all presidents from the earliest possible date of presidentialism in all countries
with a directly elected president. However, we can rely on previous estimates
indicating that between 20 and 30 per cent of presidents extend the term in one
way or the other (Baturo 2014: 148; Ginsburg, Melton, and Elkins 2011: 1845). In
order not to inflate compliance rates, Ginsburg et al. (2011: 1845–6), who arrived
at the figure of 20 per cent, excluded presidents who fail to serve their complete
terms for whatever reason. They acknowledged that their figure probably
underestimated the phenomenon because some successful “extenders” may
have “under stayed”, that is, extended in advance but still failed to serve initial
terms. In Baturo (2014: 148), the author arrived at the figure of 29 per cent. This
was based on the additional inclusion of presidents who prolonged even if
they had not completed their original terms and exited earlier than expected.
In summary, depending on the sample and the measurement as to what con-
stitutes non-compliance with presidential term limits, every fourth or fifth
president who reaches the end of her or his mandate, extends the term.
THE EFFECT OF PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS
As noted previously, studying the effect of presidential term limits raises diffi-
cult methodological questions. Given they are endogenously chosen, arguably
it may be more advantageous to set aside the language of the causal inference
and understand instead the context and politics of presidential term limits.
Nonetheless, there are ways in which the consequences of presidential term
limits can be addressed.
If term limits are binding (as in democratic settings), then scholars can still
study the effects of presidential term limits in a similar manner to the study
of legislative term limits: how they restrict the incumbency advantage; how and
whether re-election incentives make two-term presidents pursue different pol-
icies in contrast to their single-term peers; how and whether terms of different
lengths affect policy horizons or electoral cycles or make presidential elections
concurrent with legislative elections, or not, and whether it matters.
It is when presidential term limits cannot be assumed to be (always) binding
that their effects are both potentially most important but also most difficult to
identify. Does the presence of presidential term limits increase the prospects
for democracy in a country? The standard assumption is that it does. Recall

that the argument from tyranny was the reason why the Venice Commission
recommends the presence of a term-limit regime. The reasoning here is that
term limits change the preferences of political actors in ways that benefit the
prospects for democracy. In the previous section, though, it was noted that
the choice of presidential term limits is endogenous to prevailing political
preferences. Put differently, this means, for example, that the existence of
preferences for a democratic system among political actors causes the choice
of presidential term limits in the first place. In this event, the presence of term
limits does not change preferences in favour of democracy in the way that the
Venice Commission assumes. Those pro-democratic preferences were already
there. Perhaps, though, the presence of presidential term limits can be benefi-
cial for democracy in specific cases, namely young democracies and quasi-
democracies. Arguably, these are the countries that the Venice Commission
was referring to.
We believe that it is an extremely challenging task to study the effects of term
limits on democracy, or the other way around, that of democracy on term
limits. Certainly, there is strong association between the two, as evidenced by
many country chapters. It is clear that democracy and presidential term limits
generally travel together, as we acknowledged earlier in this chapter. This is
because across time and space, term limits on the chief executive are much
more likely be implemented (and complied with) in a democratic regime than
in a dictatorship. As evidenced in Chapters 5 and 6 of this volume, countries
without term limits exhibit on average much lower democracy scores than
those with them, and more “serious” changes to term limits, such as the removal
of restrictions on the number of terms, occur in less democratic settings more
frequently than less serious changes, such as the introduction of an additional
presidential term. Furthermore, for presidents who experience continuismo,
that is, those who do not comply with term limits, there is statistically signifi-
cant deterioration in democracy scores before and after such continuismo.2 The
observed deterioration in scores can be explained by the fact that one of the
constituent indicators included in the Polity 2 score, the measure of executive
constraints, accounts for “attempts by the executive to change some constitutional
restrictions, such as prohibitions on succeeding himself, or extending his term,
fail and are not adopted” (Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers 2016: 24). Therefore, the
observed decline in scores following continuismo is partly explained by how the
measure of democracy is constructed in the first place. Another important and
widely used indicator for democracy, developed by Przeworski, Alvarez,
Cheibub, and Limongi (2000), relies on the observed executive turnover (which
in turn will be partly determined by compliance with presidential term limits),
as one of its key components. In other words, democracy and term limits are
seen to travel together not only because of theoretical expectations but also
because the relevant indicators are “contaminated” by each other.
While we cannot address the causal relationship between democracy and

presidential term limits empirically, we can briefly sketch how these two factors
“work” on each other. First, and particular in democratic and partly democratic
regimes, leaders who seek continuismo need to weaken or dismantle checks
and balances first. Presidents do so in the process of an overall authoritarian
reversal. Therefore, democratic deterioration will be reflected in lower democ-
racy scores even prior to continuismo. Second, unless democratic checks and
balances remain intact even after continuismo (for an exception, see Chapter 17
on Senegal in this volume), such presidents accumulate incumbency advantage
in various ways and generally become more difficult to unseat in elections.
In fact, they are more likely to lose office in less regular manner such as in a
coup or an uprising. In turn, presidents who have cleared the way for multiple
re-elections, and whose initial popularity may decline over time, realize they
need to prevent the possibility of irregular exits and they tend to make their
regimes even more repressive over time (Wintrobe 1998: 20–5). For these reasons,
deterioration in democracy can be regarded as one of the effects of continuismo,
even if the identification of such effects is extremely challenging.
In this context, it is important to be circumspect about the relationship
between presidential term limits and democracy. In the chapters that follow,
there are regional studies, small-n comparative studies and single-country case
studies of term limits in autocracies, personalist regimes, established democra-
cies, and young and quasi-democracies. One of the focuses of the analysis is
the relationship, if any, between the presence of presidential term limits and
democracy. The endogenous selection of presidential term limits is a particular
problem for the study of their effect on democracy. Nonetheless, there are other
outcomes that are perhaps less compromised by the endogeneity problem.
Throughout the volume, the contributors discuss possible effects of term limits
on rent-seeking and corruption, policy horizons and economic policymaking,
initiation of international crises, regime stability, succession politics and intra-
party politics, such as whether term limits affect political careers and the emer-
gence of ambitious political leaders, among other factors.
B O OK STRUCTURE
There are five sections to the book. The first section is an extended theory,
survey, and history section that is focused on presidential term limits as an
idea and as an institution. The next three sections comprise comparative and
country studies of presidential term limits in consolidated democracies, non-
democracies, and third-wave countries, that is, transitional and unconsolidated
regimes. The final section summarizes what we have learnt about presidential
term limits asks: What difference do term limits make?
In Section 1 the volume discusses the theory of presidential term limits and
tenure restrictions in general from the point of political theory. It surveys the
universe of presidential term limits and provides a comprehensive survey of
various constitutional and “para-constitutional” strategies employed by the
incumbent presidents across the world to remain in office longer than their
term limits in effect at the time of their assuming office stipulate originally. It
also discusses presidential term limits from the constitutional law perspective.
In Section 2 of the book compares the politics of term limits in non-
democracies. The selection of cases tackles the problem of leadership succession
in non-democracies and how fixed terms may reduce the uncertainty over
succession and elite infighting. Chapters also compare the effects of economic
policy in dictatorships that limit their leaders versus those that do not. In par-
ticular, this section examines why single terms were in place in dictatorial and
oligarchic regimes of Latin America from the 1800s until the 1980s, the effects
of single terms on regime stability and policy in Brazil and Mexico under non-
democratic rule, the avoidance of term-limit provisions though the so-called
politique de doublure in Nicaragua during the Somoza family rule, as well as
the absence of term limits—and in the case of Tunisia under Bourguiba—the
presidency for life—in Tunisia and Togo. It also includes Kazakhstan, where
term limits were manipulated more often than elections were held.
During the third wave, or to be more specific, following the end of the Cold
War, almost all newly independent or democratizing countries introduced
presidential term limits. When the time came for leaders to depart, however,
some duly stepped down whereas others abolished or avoided term limits,
usually signalling the end of the third-wave democratic experiment. Section 3
examines a variety of third-wave countries, ranging from cases where presi-
dential term limits remained in place and where the president never attempted
to subvert term limits (e.g. Kenya), to where they were subject to unsuccessful
attempts at reform (Malawi, Zambia), to where they were either abolished or
avoided and presidents were able to remain in office beyond their constitutional
mandates (Russia, Uganda). Why did practice vary? What were the consequences
of this variation in practice?
Section 4 examines term limits in democracies. In some of these countries,
notably in Latin America where the issue remains ongoing and divisive, consti-
tutions often stipulate single presidential terms. In some cases, though, there
has been a change from a single to two consecutive terms. The volume includes
countries where single terms with life bans have persisted (Guatemala, South
Korea), where there was a change that allowed non-consecutive re-election
(Costa Rica), and where second terms in previously single-term presidencies
were introduced (Argentina, Colombia, Bolivia). The variety of constitutional
arrangements permits readers to assess the relative effects of single-term offices
versus two-term offices on elections, party politics, corruption, political careers,
and the economic policy.
Finally, Section 5, which includes an extended Conclusions chapter, steps

back and asks what the comparative evidence tells us about the effect of presi-
dential term limits. How does the international policy community think about
the issue of presidential term limits? On the ground, what can be done to
address the potentially damaging consequences of the abolition of presidential
term limits and term-limit avoidance?
N OT E S
1. As discussed in Chapter 13 of this volume and reiterated in the Conclusion,
because the supreme leader of China traditionally occupies three political posts
including the least important post of state president for which term limits were
removed in the 2018 amendment that altered the second part of article 79 of the
Chinese constitution, the change was arguably redundant. Following the October
2017 party congress, the leader of China could have remained as the effective polit-
ical leader beyond a second term by occupying more important posts of the party’s
general secretary and the head of the Central Military Commission.
2. On average, following continuismo, the average Polity 2 scores for years prior to first
(or only) continuismo, and subsequent years, decline by 1.1 points, from –2.5 to –3.6,
on a scale ranging from –10 to 10. The decline is even more substantial—by 3.1
points—for presidents who enter office in more democratic settings, defined as having
a positive Polity 2 score in the first year in office, such as Hugo Chavez of Venezuela
for example. The calculation is by the authors for presidents from 1945 to 2017.
B I B L IO G R A P H Y
Baturo, A. 2014. Democracy, Dictatorship, and Term Limits. Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press.
Baturo, A., and R. Elgie. 2018. Why do authoritarian regimes adopt bicameralism?
Cooptation, control, and masking controversial reforms. Democratization 25(5):
919–37.
Bueno de Mesquita, B., A. Smith, R. M. Siverson, and J. D. Morrow. 2003. The Logic of
Political Survival. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Carey, J. 2000. Parchment, Equilibria, and Institutions. Comparative Political Studies
33(6/7): 735–61.
Carey, J. 2014. The Reelection Debate in Latin America. Latin American Politics and
Society 45(1): 119–33.
Dulani, B. M. 2011. Personal Rule and Presidential Term Limits in Africa. Dissertation
submitted to Michigan State University in partial fulfilment of the degree of Doctor
of Philosophy.
Ginsburg, T., J. Melton, and Z. Elkins. 2011. On the Evasion of Executive Term Limits.
William and Mary Law Review 52: 1807–72.
Halff, M. 2016. Changing Term Limits: An electoral perspective. A policy brief of the
Electoral Integrity Initiative. Geneva: Kofi Annan Foundation.
Maltz, G. 2007. The case for presidential term limits. Journal of Democracy 18(1):
128–42.
Marshall, M., T. Gurr, and K. Jaggers. 2016. Political Regime Characteristics and
Transitions, 1800–2015, Dataset Users’ Manual, Polity IV Project. University of
Maryland, College Park, MD.
Pérez-Liñán, A. 2007. Presidential Impeachment and the New Political Instability in
Latin America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Przeworski, A. 2005. Democracy as an Equilibrium. Public Choice 123: 253–73.
Przeworski, A. 2015. Acquiring the Habit of Changing Governments through Elections.
Comparative Political Studies 48: 101–29.
Przeworski, A., M. Alvarez, J. Cheibub, and F. Limongi. 2000. Democracy and
Development: Political Institutions and Well-being in the World, 1950–1990.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Venice Commission. 2018. Report of term-limits. Part 1—Presidents. Strasbourg:
European Commission for Democracy Through Law (Venice Commission). Study
no. 908/2017, CDL-AD(2018)010.
Wintrobe, R. 1998. The Political Economy of Dictatorship. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Section I
Theorizing Presidential Rotation

Peter Stone
Once a marginal phenomenon, presidential term limits have become increasingly

common in modern electoral systems. Such limits were largely confined to
Latin America in the nineteenth century, but most of the world caught up dur-
ing the late twentieth century (Baturo 2014: ch. 2), and today most presidential
systems restrict the number of terms their heads of state can serve, even when
the presidency is a largely ceremonial office. (The president of Ireland, for
example, has very limited powers, but can serve no more than two seven-year
terms.) But this extensive real-world experience with presidential term limits
has not been matched by a comparable interest on the part of political science.
Political scientists have conducted relatively few large-scale empirical studies
of presidential term limits and their effects. But perhaps more importantly, they
have devoted relatively little effort to analysing presidential term limits and
their role in a healthy vibrant democracy.1 Presidential term limits, in other
words, remain significantly undertheorized.
What do presidential term limits do? What are their advantages and disad-
vantages? First and foremost, presidential term limits ensure rotation in office,
which Thomas Jefferson defined as “an obligation on the holder of that office to
go out at a certain period” (quoted in Petracca 1996: 247). For this reason, any
investigation of presidential term limits should begin with this fact. It should
inquire, in other words, what reasons can be advanced for and against ensuring
rotation in office, and how many of those reasons apply to presidential term
limits. In this chapter, I undertake this task. I do so by revisiting the experience
of the first major democracy—the democracy of Athens in the fifth and fourth
centuries bce—to see what lessons it can teach us about rotation in office, and
what those lessons have to say about presidential term limits today.
Section 2 of the chapter demonstrates how the political science world has
connected democracy to rotation, and both to the political experience of ancient
Athens. Section 3 examines that experience. In doing do, it demonstrates that
the case for rotation is much more diverse than the political science literature
suggests. Rotation accomplished many tasks in Classical Athens that it cannot

accomplish today; moreover, rotation can accomplish many tasks today that it
did not accomplish for the Athenians. This is because rotation in office, when
it occurs, inevitably involves a specific political office, selected in a particular
method, within a particular institutional context. Efforts to abstract from these
details—by defending some sort of general all-purpose “principle of rotation”,
for example—are likely to be self-defeating. I conclude in Section 4 by sceptic-
ally concluding from that experience that no general “principle of rotation” has
ever played a role in democratic politics. I also conclude that the case for presi-
dential term limits has little to do with rotation in office as practised in Athenian
democracy, and may have little to do with democracy at all.
ROTATION IN OFFICE
Political scientists regularly associate rotation in office with democracy. The

following four quotations, spanning a century in time, are representative of this
position:
It is a fundamental principle of free government that its officers shall “at fixed
periods be reduced to a private station, return into that body” from which they
were originally taken, and that the vacancies thus caused shall be filled by regular
election. (Stout 1918: 429, quoting the Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776))
From antiquity to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century America, rotation in office
was a political principle put into the design of new political institutions in order to
prevent the corruption of elected officials, check government tyranny, guarantee
liberty, enhance the quality of political representation, and promote widespread
service in government.
(Petracca 1992b: 19; see also Petracca 1991, 1992a, 1993a, 1995)
The concept of rotation in office is rooted in political philosophy and has benefited
from centuries of debate between ancient philosophers. The assumptions are
framed in a strong conceptual and normative understanding of democracy, which
in turn champions this cause. (Baracskay 2006: 1)
A central feature of democracy is that it offers to citizens an opportunity to rule
and obey in turn. (Schwartzberg 2014: 2)
It is thus common both to place rotation in office at the heart of democracy and
to trace this association between democracy and rotation back to the very
beginnings of democracy.
Those who connect democracy and rotation in this way provide both theoret-
ical and historical justification for doing so. Theoretically, they invoke Aristotle,
and his famous injunction that citizens should rule and be ruled by turns
(Politics 1.1259b). Aristotle’s name routinely arises, for example, in discussions
Theorizing Presidential Rotation 21
of legislative term limits (e.g., Struble 1979–80: 652; Petracca 1991: 7; Petracca
1993a: 703; Petracca 1993b: 494; Petracca 1995: 738; López 2003: 4; Chen and
Niou 2005: 390; Baracskay 2006: 2; Powell 2008: 32). Historically, they invoke
the experience of the first democracy—the democracy of Classical Athens—as
precedent for this connection. Mark Petracca, for example, claims that “rota-
tion in office . . . accompanied the emergence of democratic theory in ancient
Greece and Rome and the development of representative democracy after the
Renaissance” (Petracca 1992b: 19; cf. López 2003: 4–5). Similarly, Robert
Struble and Z.W. Jahre write that “annual rotation was the norm in the democ-
racies and republics of antiquity and the Renaissance”, then explicitly invoke
Athens in the footnote that follows (Struble and Jahre 1991: 34, 37 n. 7). Both
of these moves appear in discussions of presidential term limits as well. In his
recent book on presidential term limits, for example, Alexander Baturo both
asserts that “The idea of term limits is as old as democracy itself, and there is
no surprise that this overview should begin with the ancient Greeks who
were the first to practice term limits” and connects this practice with Aristotle
(Baturo 2014: 18, 19).
In the next section, I will take up the historical case for an association
between democracy and rotation. (Space prohibits further consideration of the
connection drawn between rotation and Aristotle.) I will examine how rotation
was practised in ancient Athens—what it did, and what it didn’t do—and how
this practice fits (or fails to fit) with the contemporary use of presidential term
limits. In the final section, I will draw lessons from this examination for rota-
tion in office generally and for presidential term limits specifically.
ROTATION IN ANCIENT GREECE
Does the Athenian experience bear out the connection political scientists have
made between democracy and rotation in office? If so, does this connection
establish a case for presidential term limits? In this section, I will argue that
the answers to these questions are yes and no, respectively. Athens did make
extensive use of rotation in office. It did not, however, require rotation for any
office that even remotely resembled a modern presidency. For those offices, the
Athenian democracy established safeguards to protect against abuses of power,
but term limits were not among them. In short, what Athens did with rotation is
not what presidential term limits are supposed to do. And what presidential term
limits are supposed to do is something that Athens did, but not through rotation.
Political scientists are certainly correct to identify a practice of rotation in the
Athenian democracy of the Classical period (fifth and fourth century bce)—a
practice of regularly replacing officeholders. Athens did, as Aristotle testified in
his Constitution of Athens, by and large forbid citizens from holding the same
office multiple times (Constitution of Athens LXII3).2 But there were exceptions
to this rule, most notably the board of ten strategoi (generals) who directed
Athenian military affairs. And more importantly, there was a fundamental dis-
tinction between the political offices for which rotation was enforced and those
for which it was not. This distinction renders impossible any easy translation of
the Athenian experience with rotation into the present day.
To be sure, the set of term-limited offices in Athens far outnumbered the
set which could be held indefinitely. The former category included the great
administrative council (Boule) and most of the magistracies. The total number
of such positions numbered in the hundreds—quite impressive for a city of
perhaps 35,000–40,000 adult male citizens (Mulgan 1984: 541; Alford 1985:
299 n. 12; Finley 1985: 51–2).3 In addition, the range of tasks performed by citi-
zens in term-limited magistracies was quite wide. These magistracies included,
among other positions,
the 10 treasurers of Athena; the 10 poletai (who let state contracts, mining rights,
and the right to collect taxes); and 10 receivers, or apodektai (who received money
generated by the poletai). Among other magistracies were a board of 10 who cared
for the sanctuaries; 10 city commissioners (who controlled the prices of flute girls,
and regulated the location of dung heaps); 10 superintendents of markets; 10
inspectors of weights and measures; 35 inspectors of the corn supply; 10 commis-
sioners of trade; 11 prison wardens; 5 to introduce small claims cases to the courts;
a board of 40 to sit as a small claims court (disputes under 40 drachmae); 5 road
commissioners; and 20 auditors. (Alford 1985: 301)
The vast majority of administrative tasks performed in democratic Athens

were in fact performed by officials restricted to single-year terms.
All of this would seem to suggest that term limits played a central role in
Athenian political practice, in a way that should be encouraging to term-limit
advocates today. But Athenian political life was radically different from our
own in ways that render this extrapolation problematic. Most significantly, all
of the Athenian political offices restricted by term limits—including the magis-
tracies and the Boule—were filled using sortition, the selection of political
officials by lot.4 The Athenians used election (voting) to fill very few of their
political offices, but critically, they imposed no term limits on these offices,
including the strategoi. Pericles, the most famous general in Classical Athens,
was continuously re-elected from 443 to 429 bce (Ober 1989a: 86). This is sig-
nificant, given that the position of general was the closest thing Athens had to
an executive office. Aristotle famously suggested that election was an aristocratic
selection method while sortition was a democratic method (Politics 4.1294b).
By this standard, Athens tended to impose term limits on the offices it filled
democratically but not those it filled aristocratically.5
In the modern era, election and not sortition is the characteristic method of
selecting political officials; in Athens, it was the opposite.6 Term-limit advocates
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Hartford Convention.
This opposition finally culminated in the assembling of a

convention at Hartford, at which delegates were present from all of
the New England states. They sat for three weeks with closed doors,
and issued an address which will be found in this volume in the book
devoted to political platforms. It was charged by the Democrats that
the real object of the convention was to negotiate a separate treaty of
peace, on behalf of New England, with Great Britain, but this charge
was as warmly denied. The exact truth has not since been discovered,
the fears of the participants of threatened trials for treason, closing
their mouths, if their professions were false. The treaty of Ghent,
which was concluded on December 14th, 1814, prevented other
action by the Hartford convention than that stated. It had assembled
nine days before the treaty, which is as follows:
Treaty of Ghent.
This treaty was negotiated by the Right Honorable James Lord

Gambier, Henry Goulburn, Esq., and William Adams, Esq., on the
part of Great Britain, and John Quincy Adams, James A. Bayard,
Henry Clay, Jonathan Russell, and Albert Gallatin, on behalf of the
United States.
The treaty can be found on p. 218, vol. 8, of Little & Brown’s
Statutes at Large. The first article provided for the restoration of all
archives, records, or property taken by either party from the other
during the war. This article expressly provides for the restoration of
“slaves or other private property.” The second article provided for the
cessation of hostilities and limitation of time of capture. The third
article provided for the restoration of prisoners of war.
The fourth article defined the boundary established by the treaty of
1783, and provided for commissioners to mark the same.
The fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth articles established rules to
govern the proceedings of the commissioners.
The ninth article bound the United States and His Britannic
Majesty to end all hostilities with Indian tribes, with whom they were
then respectively at war.
The tenth article reads as follows:—
“Whereas the traffic in slaves is irreconcilable with the principles of humanity
and justice; and, whereas, both His Majesty and the United States are desirous of
continuing their efforts to promote its entire abolition, it is hereby agreed that both
the contracting parties shall use their best endeavors to accomplish so desirable an
object.”
The eleventh and last article provides for binding effect of the
treaty, upon the exchange of ratifications.
The position of New England in the war is explained somewhat by
her exposed position. Such of the militia as served endured great
hardships, and they were almost constantly called from their homes
to meet new dangers. Distrusting their loyalty, the general
government had withheld all supplies from the militia of
Massachusetts and Connecticut for the year 1814, and these States
were forced to bear the burden of supporting them, at the same time
contributing their quota of taxes to the general government—
hardships, by the way, not greater than those borne by Pennsylvania
and Ohio in the late war for the Union, nor half as hard as those
borne by the border States at the same time. True, the coast towns of
Massachusetts were subjected to constant assault from the British
navy, and the people of these felt that they were defenceless. It was
on their petition that the legislature of Massachusetts finally, by a
vote of 226 to 67, adopted the report favoring the calling of the
Hartford Convention. A circular was then addressed to the
Governors of the other States, with a request that it be laid before
their legislatures, inviting them to appoint delegates, and stating that
the object was to deliberate upon the dangers to which the eastern
section was exposed, “and to devise, if practicable, means of security
and defence which might be consistent with the preservation of their
resources from total ruin, and not repugnant to their obligations as
members of the Union.” The italicized portion shows that there was
at least then no design of forming a separate treaty, or of promoting
disunion. The legislatures of Connecticut and Rhode Island endorsed
the call and sent delegates. Those of New Hampshire and Vermont
did not, but delegates were sent by local conventions. These
delegates, it is hardly necessary to remark, were all members of the
Federal party, and their suspected designs and action made the
“Hartford Convention” a bye-word and reproach in the mouths of
Democratic orators for years thereafter. It gave to the Democrats, as
did the entire history of the war, the prestige of superior patriotism,
and they profited by it as long as the memory of the war of 1812 was
fresh. Indeed, directly after the war, all men seemed to keep in
constant view the reluctance of the Federalists to support the war,
and their almost open hostility to it in New England. Peace brought
prosperity and plenty, but not oblivion of the old political issues, and
this was the beginning of the end of the Federal party. Its decay
thereafter was rapid and constant.
The eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth Congresses had continued
Democratic. The fourteenth began Dec. 4, 1815, with the Democratic
majority in the House increased to 30. Clay had taken part in
negotiating the treaty, and on his return was again elected to the
House, and was for the third time elected speaker. Though 65
Federalists had been elected, but 10 were given to Federal candidates
for speaker, this party now showing a strong, and under the
circumstances, a very natural desire to rub out party lines. The
internal taxes and the postage rates were reduced.
The Protective Tariff.
President Madison, in his message, had urged upon Congress a

revision of the tariff, and pursuant to his recommendation what was
at the time called a protective tariff was passed. Even Calhoun then
supported it, while Clay proclaimed that protection must no longer
be secondary to revenue, but of primary importance. The rates fixed,
however, were insufficient, and many American manufactures were
soon frustrated by excessive importations of foreign manufactures.
The position of Calhoun and Lowndes, well known leaders from
South Carolina, is explained by the fact that just then the proposal of
a protective tariff was popular in the south, in view of the heavy
duties upon raw cotton which England then imposed. The
Federalists in weakness changed their old position when they found
the Democrats advocating a tariff, and the latter quoted and
published quite extensively Alexander Hamilton’s early report in
favor of it. Webster, in the House at the time and a leading
Federalist, was against the bill. The parties had exchanged positions
on the question.
Peace brought with it another exchange of positions. President
Madison, although he had vetoed a bill to establish a National Bank
in 1815, was now (in 1816) anxious for the establishment of such an
institution. Clay had also changed his views, and claimed that the
experiences of the war showed the necessity for a national currency.
The bill met with strong opposition from a few Democrats and nearly
all of the Federalists (the latter having changed position on the
question since 1811), but it passed and was signed by the President.
A bill to promote internal improvements, advocated by Clay, was
at first favored by Madison, but his mind changed and he vetoed the
measure—the first of its kind passed by Congress.
The Democratic members of Congress, before the adjournment of
the first session, held a caucus for the nomination of candidates to
succeed Madison and Gerry. It was understood that the retiring
officers and their confidential friends favored James Monroe of
Virginia. Their wishes were carried out, but not without a struggle,
Wm. H. Crawford of Georgia receiving 54 votes against 65 for
Monroe. The Democrats opposed to Virginia’s domination in the
politics of the country, made a second effort, and directed it against
Monroe in the caucus. Aaron Burr denounced him as an improper
and incompetent candidate, and joined in the protest then made
against any nomination by a Congressional caucus; he succeeding in
getting nineteen Democrats to stay out of the caucus. Later he
advised renewed attempts to break down the Congressional caucus
system, and before the nomination favored Andrew Jackson as a
means to that end. Daniel B. Tompkins was nominated by the
Democrats for Vice-President. The Federalists named Rufus King of
New York, but in the election which followed he received but 24 out
of 217 electoral votes. The Federalists divided their votes for Vice-
President.
Monroe was inaugurated on the 14th of March, 1817, the oath
being administered by Chief Justice Marshall. The inaugural address
was so liberal in its tone that it seemed to give satisfaction to men of
all shades of political opinion. The questions which had arisen during
the war no longer had any practical significance, while the people
were anxious to give the disturbing ones which ante-dated at least a
season of rest. Two great and opposing policies had previously
obtained, and singularly enough each seemed exactly adapted to the
times when they were triumphant. The Federal power had been
asserted in a government which had gathered renewed strength
during what was under the circumstances a great and perilous war,
and the exigencies of that war in many instances compelled the
Republicans or Democrats, or the Democratic-Republicans as some
still called them, to concede points which had theretofore been in
sharp dispute, and they did it with that facility which only Americans
can command in emergencies: yet as a party they kept firm hold of
the desire to enlarge the scope of liberty in its application to the
citizens, and just here kept their original landmark.
It is not singular then that the administration of Monroe opened
what has ever since been known in politics as the “Era of Good
Feeling.” Party differences rapidly subsided, and political serenity
was the order of the day. Monroe made a tour of the States, with the
direct object of inspecting fortifications and means of defence, and in
this way spread the good feeling, without seeming to have any such
object. He was everywhere favorably greeted by the people, and
received by delegations which in many instances were specially made
up of all shades of opinion.
The Cabinet was composed of men of rare political distinction,
even in that day of great men. It was probably easier to be great then
than now, just as it is easier to be a big political hero in the little State
of Delaware than it is in the big States of New York or Pennsylvania.
Yet these men were universally accepted as great without regard to
their localities. All were Republicans or Democrats, with John
Quincy Adams as Secretary of State, Wm. H. Crawford (Monroe’s
competitor for the nomination) as Secretary of the Treasury, John C.
Calhoun as Secretary of War, William Wirt as Attorney-General. All
of these united with the President in the general desire to call a halt
upon the political asperities which were then recognized as a public
evil. On one occasion, during his tour, the citizens of Kennebunk and
its vicinity, in Maine, having in their address alluded to the prospects
of a political union among the people in support of the
administration, the President said in reply:
“You are pleased to express a confident hope that a spirit of mutual
conciliation may be one of the blessings which may result from my
administration. This indeed would be an eminent blessing, and I
pray it may be realized. Nothing but union is waiting to make us a
great people. The present time affords the happiest presage that this
union is fast consummating. It cannot be otherwise; I daily see
greater proofs of it. The further I advance in my progress in the
country, the more I perceive that we are all Americans—that we
compose but one family—that our republican institutions will be
supported and perpetuated by the united zeal and patriotism of all.
Nothing could give me greater satisfaction than to behold a perfect
union among ourselves—a union which is necessary to restore to
social intercourse its former charms, and to render our happiness, as
a nation, unmixed and complete. To promote this desirable result
requires no compromise of principle, and I promise to give it my
continued attention, and my best endeavors.”
Even General Jackson, since held up to public view by historians
as the most austere and “stalwart” of all politicians, caught the sweet
infection of peace, and thus advised President Monroe:—
“Now is the time to exterminate that monster, called party spirit.
By selecting [for cabinet officers] characters most conspicuous for
their probity, virtue, capacity, and firmness, without regard to party,
you will go far to, if not entirely, eradicate those feelings, which, on
former occasions, threw so many obstacles in the way of government.
The chief magistrate of a great and powerful nation should never
indulge in party feelings. His conduct should be liberal and
disinterested; always bearing in mind, that he acts for the whole and
not a part of the community.”
This advice had been given with a view to influence the
appointment of a mixed political Cabinet, but while Monroe
professed to believe that a free government could exist without
political parties, he nevertheless sought to bring all of the people into
one political fold, and that the Democratic. Yet he certainly and
plainly sought to allay factions in his own party, and with this view
selected Crawford for the Treasury—the gentleman who had been so
warmly supported in the nominating struggle by the Clintonians and
by all who objected to the predominating influence of Virginia in
national politics.
Monroe, like his immediate predecessor, accepted and acted upon
the doctrines of the new school of Republicans as represented by
Clay and Calhoun, both of whom still favored a tariff, while Clay had
become a warm advocate of a national system of internal
improvements. These two statesmen thus early differed on some
questions, but they were justly regarded as the leading friends and
advisers of the administration, for to both still clung the patriotic
recollections of the war which they had so warmly advocated and
supported, and the issue of which attested their wisdom. Clay
preferred to be called a Republican; Calhoun preferred to be called a
Democrat, and just then the terms were so often exchanged and
mingled that history is at fault in the exact designation, while
tradition is colored by the bias of subsequent events and lives.
Monroe’s first inaugural leaned toward Clay’s scheme of internal
improvements, but questioned its constitutionality. Clay was next to
Jefferson the most original of all our statesmen and politicians. He
was prolific in measures, and almost resistless in their advocacy.
From a political standpoint he was the most direct author of the war
of 1812, for his advocacy mainly brought it to the issue of arms,
which through him and Calhoun were substituted for diplomacy.
And Calhoun then stood in broader view before the country than
since. His sectional pride and bias had been rarely aroused, and like
Clay he seemed to act for the country as an entirety. Subsequent
sectional issues changed the views held of him by the people of both
the North and South.
We have said that Monroe leaned toward internal improvements,
but he thought Congress was not clothed by the Constitution with the
power to authorize measures supporting it, and when the
opportunity was presented (May 4, 1822) he vetoed the bill “for the
preservation and repair of the Cumberland road,” and accompanied
the veto with a most elaborate message in which he discussed the
constitutional aspects of the question. A plain majority of the friends
of the administration, under the leadership of Clay, supported the
theory of internal improvements from the time the administration
began, but were reluctant to permit a division of the party on the
question.
Mississippi and Illinois were admitted to the Union during the
“Era of Good Feeling,” without serious political disturbance, while
Alabama was authorized to form a state constitution and
government, and Arkansas was authorized as a separate territorial
government from part of Missouri. In 1819 President Monroe made a
tour through the Southern States to examine their defenses and see
and get acquainted with the people. From the first inauguration of
Monroe up to 1819 party lines can hardly be said to have existed, but
in the sixteenth session of Congress, which continued until May,
1820, new questions of national interest arose, prominent among
which were additional protective duties for our manufactures;
internal improvements by the government; acknowledgments of the
independence of the South American States.
The Monroe Doctrine.
Upon the question of recognizing the independence of the South

American States, the President made a record which has ever since
been quoted and denominated “The Monroe Doctrine.” It is
embodied in the following abstract of his seventh annual message,
under date of Dec. 2d, 1823:
“It was stated, at the commencement of the last session, that a
great effort was then making in Spain and Portugal to improve the
condition of the people of those countries, and that it appeared to be
conducted with extraordinary moderation. It need scarcely be
remarked that the result has been, so far, very different from what
was then anticipated. Of events in that quarter of the globe, with
which we have so much intercourse, and from which we derive our
origin, we have always been anxious and interested spectators. The
citizens of the United States cherish sentiments the most friendly in
favor of the liberty and happiness of their fellow-men on that side of
the Atlantic. In the wars of the European powers, in matters relating
to themselves, we have never taken any part nor does it comport with
our policy to do so. It is only when rights are invaded or seriously
menaced, that we resent injuries, or make preparation for our
defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity
more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious
to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the
allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of
America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their
respective governments. And to the defense of our own, which has
been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and
matured by the wisdom of their most enlightened citizens, and under
which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is
devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable
relations existing between the United States and those powers, to
declare, that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend
their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our
peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any
European power we have not interfered, and shall not interfere. But
with the governments who have declared their independence, and
maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great
consideration, and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not
view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or
controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European
power, in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly
disposition toward the United States. In the war between those new
governments and Spain, we declared our neutrality at the time of
their recognition, and to this we have adhered, and shall continue to
adhere, provided no change shall occur which, in the judgment of the
competent authorities of this government, shall make a
corresponding change on the part of the United States indispensable
to their security.
“The late events in Spain and Portugal show that Europe is still
unsettled. Of this important fact no stronger proof can be adduced,
than that the allied powers should have thought it proper, on a
principle satisfactory to themselves, to have interposed by force in
the internal concerns of Spain. To what extent such interposition
may be carried, on the same principle, is a question to which all
independent powers, whose governments differ from theirs, are
interested; even those most remote, and surely none more so than
the United States. Our policy in regard to Europe, which was adopted
at an early stage of the wars which have so long agitated that quarter
of the globe, nevertheless remains the same, which is, not to interfere
in the internal concerns of any of its powers; to consider the
government, de facto, as the legitimate government for us: to
cultivate friendly relations with it, and to preserve those relations by
a frank, firm, and manly policy; meeting, in all instances, the just
claims of every power, submitting to injuries from none. But in
regard to these continents, circumstances are eminently and
conspicuously different. It is impossible that the allied powers should
extend their political system to any portion of either continent
without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can any one
believe, that our southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt
it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we
should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference. If
we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and
those new governments, and their distance from each other, it must
be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy
of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope
that other powers will pursue the same course.”
The second election of Monroe, in 1820, was accomplished without
a contest. Out of 231 electoral votes, but one was cast against him,
and that for John Quincy Adams. Mr. Tompkins, the candidate for
Vice-President, was only a little less fortunate, there being 14
scattering votes against him. Neither party, if indeed there was a
Federalist party left made any nominations.
The Missouri Compromise.
The second session of the 17th Congress opened on the 4th day of
March, 1820, with James Monroe at the head of the Executive
Department of the Government, and the Democratic party in the
majority in both branches of the Federal Legislature. The Cabinet at
that time was composed of the most brilliant minds of the country,
indeed as most justly remarked by Senator Thomas H. Benton in his
published review of the events of that period, it would be difficult to
find in any government, in any country, at any time, more talent and
experience, more dignity and decorum, more purity of private life, a
larger mass of information, and more addiction to business, than was
comprised in the list of celebrated names then constituting the
executive department of the government. The legislative department
was equally impressive. The exciting and agitating question then
pending before Congress was on the admission of the State of
Missouri into the Federal Union, the subject of the issue being the
attempted tacking on of conditions restricting slavery within her
limits. She was admitted without conditions under the so-called
compromise, which abolished it in certain portions of the then
province of Louisiana. In this controversy, the compromise was
sustained and carried entirely by the Democratic Senators and
members from the Southern and slaveholding States aided and
sanctioned by the Executive, and it was opposed by fifteen Senators
from non-slaveholding States, who represented the opposite side on
the political questions of the day. It passed the House by a close vote
of 86 to 82. It has been seriously questioned since whether this act
was constitutional. The real struggle was political, and for the
balance of power. For a while it threatened the total overthrow of all
political parties upon principle, and the substitution of geographical
parties discriminated by the slave line, and thus destroying the
proper action of the Federal government, and leading to a separation
of the States. It was a federal movement, accruing to the benefit of
that party, and at first carried all the Northern democracy in its
current, giving the supremacy to their adversaries. When this effect
was perceived, democrats from the northern non-slaveholding States
took early opportunity to prevent their own overthrow, by voting for
the admission of the States on any terms, and thus prevent the
eventual separation of the States in the establishment of
geographical parties divided by a slavery and anti-slavery line.
The year 1820 marked a period of financial distress in the country,
which soon became that of the government. The army was reduced,
and the general expenses of the departments cut down, despite
which measures of economy the Congress deemed it necessary to
authorize the President to contract for a loan of five million dollars.
Distress was the cry of the day; relief the general demand, the chief
demand coming from debtors to the Government for public lands
purchased under the then credit system, this debt at that time
aggregating twenty-three millions of dollars. The banks failed,
money vanished, instalments were coming due which could not be
met; and the opening of Congress in November, 1820, was saluted by
the arrival of memorials from all the new States praying for the relief
to the purchaser of the public lands. The President referred to it in
his annual message of that year, and Congress passed a measure of
relief by changing the system to cash sales instead of credit, reducing
the price of the lands, and allowing present debtors to apply
payments already made to portions of the land purchased,
relinquishing the remainder. Applications were made at that time for
the establishment of the preemptive system, but without effect; the
new States continued to press the question and finally prevailed, so
that now the preemptive principle has become a fixed part of our
land system, permanently incorporated with it, and to the equal
advantage of the settler and the government.
The session of 1820–21, is remarkable as being the first at which
any proposition was made in Congress for the occupation and
settlement of our territory on the Columbia river—the only part then
owned by the United States on the Pacific coast. It was made by Dr.
Floyd, a representative from Virginia, who argued that the
establishment of a civilized power on the American coast of the
Pacific could not fail to produce great and wonderful benefits not
only to our own country, but to the people of Eastern Asia, China and
Japan on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean, and that the valley of
the Columbia might become the granary of China and Japan. This
movement suggested to Senator Benton, to move, for the first time
publicly in the United States, a resolution to send ministers to the
Oriental States.
At this time treaties with Mexico and Spain were ratified, by which
the United States acquired Florida and ceded Texas; these treaties,
together with the Missouri compromise—a measure
contemporaneous with them—extinguished slave soil in all the
United States territory west of the Mississippi, except in that portion
which was to constitute the State of Arkansas; and, including the
extinction in Texas consequent upon its cession to a non-
slaveholding power, constituted the largest territorial abolition of
slavery that was ever up to that period effected by any political power
of any nation.
The outside view of the slave question in the United States, at this
time, is that the extension of slavery was then arrested,
circumscribed, and confined within narrow territorial limits, while
free States were permitted an almost unlimited expansion.
In 1822 a law passed Congress abolishing the Indian factory
system, which had been established during Washington’s
administration, in 1796, under which the Government acted as a
factor or agent for the sale of supplies to the Indians and the
purchase of furs from them; this branch of the service then belonged
to the department of the Secretary of War. The abuses discovered in
it led to the discontinuance of that system.
The Presidential election of 1824 was approaching, the candidates
were in the field, their respective friends active and busy, and
popular topics for the canvass in earnest requisition. Congress was
full of projects for different objects of internal improvement, mainly
in roads and canals, and the friends of each candidate exerted
themselves in rivalry of each other, under the supposition that their
opinions would stand for those of their principals. An act for the
preservation of the Cumberland Road, which passed both houses of
Congress, met with a veto from President Monroe, accompanied by a
state paper in exposition of his opinions upon the whole subject of
Federal interference in matters of inter state commerce and roads
and canals. He discussed the measure in all its bearings, and plainly
showed it to be unconstitutional. After stating the question, he
examined it under every head of constitutional derivation under
which its advocates claimed the power, and found it to be granted by
no one of them and virtually prohibited by some of them. This was
then and has since been considered to be the most elaborate and
thoroughly considered opinion upon the general question which has
ever been delivered by any American statesman. This great state
paper, delivered at a time when internal improvement by the federal
government had become an issue in the canvass for the Presidency
and was ardently advocated by three of the candidates and qualified
by two others, had an immense current in its power, carrying with it
many of the old strict constructionists.
The revision of the tariff, with a view to the protection of home
industry, and to the establishment of what was then called “The
American System,” was one of the large subjects before Congress at
the session of 1823–24, and was the regular commencement of the
heated debates on that question which afterwards ripened into a
serious difficulty between the federal government and some of the
Southern States. The presidential election being then depending, the
subject became tinctured with party politics, in which so far as that
ingredient was concerned, and was not controlled by other
considerations, members divided pretty much on the line which
always divided them on a question of constructive powers. The
protection of domestic industry not being among the powers granted,
was looked for in the incidental; and denied by the strict
constructionists to be a substantive term, to be exercised for the
direct purpose of protection; but admitted by all at that time and
ever since the first tariff act of 1789, to be an incident to the revenue
raising power, and an incident to be regarded in the exercise of that
power. Revenue the object, protection the incident, had been the rule
in the earlier tariffs; now that rule was sought to be reversed, and to
make protection the object of the law, and revenue the incident. Mr.
Henry Clay was the leader in the proposed revision and the
champion of the American system; he was ably supported in the
House by many able and effective speakers; who based their
argument on the general distress then alleged to be prevalent in the
country. Mr. Daniel Webster was the leading speaker on the other
side, and disputed the universality of the distress which had been
described; and contested the propriety of high or prohibitory duties,
in the present active and intelligent state of the world, to stimulate
industry and manufacturing enterprise.
The bill was carried by a close vote in both Houses. Though
brought forward avowedly for the protection of domestic
manufactures, it was not entirely supported on that ground; an
increase of revenue being the motive with some, the public debt then
being nearly ninety millions. An increased protection to the products
of several States, as lead in Missouri and Illinois, hemp in Kentucky,
iron in Pennsylvania, wool in Ohio and New York, commanded many
votes for the bill; and the impending presidential election had its
influence in its favor.
Two of the candidates, Messrs. Adams and Clay, voted for and
avowedly supported General Jackson, who voted for the bill, was for
it, as tending to give a home supply of the articles necessary in time
of war, and as raising revenue to pay the public debt; Mr. Crawford
was opposed to it, and Mr. Calhoun had withdrawn as a Presidential
candidate. The Southern planting States were dissatisfied, believing
that the new burdens upon imports which it imposed, fell upon the
producers of the exports, and tended to enrich one section of the
Union at the expense of another. The attack and support of the bill
took much of a sectional aspect; Virginia, the two Carolinas, Georgia,
and some others, being unanimous against it. Pennsylvania, New
York, Ohio, and Kentucky being unanimous for it. Massachusetts,
which up to this time had no small influence in commerce, voted,
with all, except one member, against it. With this sectional aspect, a
tariff for protection, also began to assume a political aspect, being
taken under the care of the party, afterwards denominated as Whig.
The bill was approved by President Monroe; a proof that that careful
and strict constructionist of the constitution did not consider it as
deprived of its revenue character by the degree of protection which it
extended.
A subject which at the present time is exciting much criticism, viz:
proposed amendments to the constitution relative to the election of
President and Vice-President, had its origin in movements in that
direction taken by leading Democrats during the campaign of 1824.
The electoral college has never been since the early elections, an
independent body free to select a President and Vice-President;
though in theory they have been vested with such powers, in practice
they have no such practical power over the elections, and have had
none since their institution. In every case the elector has been an
instrument, bound to obey a particular impulsion, and disobedience
to which would be attended with infamy, and with every penalty
which public indignation could inflict. From the beginning they have
stood pledged to vote for the candidate indicated by the public will;
and have proved not only to be useless, but an inconvenient
intervention between the people and the object of their choice. Mr.
McDuffie in the House of Representatives and Mr. Benton in the
Senate, proposed amendments; the mode of taking the direct vote to
be in districts, and the persons receiving the greatest number of
votes for President or Vice-President in any district, to count one
vote for such office respectively which is nothing but substituting the
candidates themselves for their electoral representatives.
In the election of 1824 four candidates were before the people for
the office of President, General Jackson, John Quincy Adams,
William H. Crawford and Henry Clay. None of them received a
majority of the 261 electoral votes, and the election devolved upon
the House of Representatives. John C. Calhoun had a majority of the
electoral votes for the office of Vice-President, and was elected. Mr.
Adams was elected President by the House of Representatives,
although General Jackson was the choice of the people, having
received the greatest number of votes at the general election. The
election of Mr. Adams was perfectly constitutional, and as such fully
submitted to by the people; but it was a violation of the demos krateo
principle; and that violation was equally rebuked. All the
representatives who voted against the will of their constituents, lost
their favor, and disappeared from public life. The representation in
the House of Representatives was largely changed at the first general
election, and presented a full opposition to the new President. Mr.
Adams himself was injured by it, and at the ensuing presidential
election was beaten by General Jackson more than two to one.
Mr. Clay, who took the lead in the House for Mr. Adams, and
afterwards took upon himself the mission of reconciling the people to
his election in a series of public speeches, was himself crippled in the
effort, lost his place in the democratic party, and joined the Whigs
(then called the national republicans). The democratic principle was
victor over the theory of the Constitution, and beneficial results
ensued. It vindicated the people in their right and their power. It re-
established parties upon the basis of principle, and drew anew party
lines, then almost obliterated under the fusion of parties during the
“era of good feeling,” and the efforts of leading men to make personal
parties for themselves. It showed the conservative power of our
government to lie in the people, more than in its constituted
authorities. It showed that they were capable of exercising the
function of self-government, and lastly, it assumed the supremacy of
the democracy for a long time, and until lost by causes to be referred
to hereafter. The Presidential election of 1824 is remarkable under
another aspect—its results cautioned all public men against future
attempts to govern presidential elections in the House of
Representatives; and it put an end to the practice of caucus
nominations for the Presidency by members of Congress. This mode
of concentrating public opinion began to be practiced as the eminent
men of the Revolution, to whom public opinion awarded a
preference, were passing away, and when new men, of more equal
pretensions, were coming upon the stage. It was tried several times
with success and general approbation, because public sentiment was
followed—not led—by the caucus. It was attempted in 1824 and
failed; all the opponents of Mr. Crawford, by their joint efforts,
succeeded, and justly in the fact though not in the motive, in
rendering these Congress caucus nominations odious to the people,
and broke them down. They were dropped, and a different mode
adopted—that of party nominations by conventions of delegates from
the States.
The administration of Mr. Adams commenced with his inaugural
address, in which the chief topic was that of internal national
improvement by the federal government. This declared policy of the
administration furnished a ground of opposition against Mr. Adams,
and went to the reconstruction of parties on the old line of strict, or
latitudinous, construction of the Constitution. It was clear from the
beginning that the new administration was to have a settled and
strong opposition, and that founded in principles of government—
the same principles, under different forms, which had discriminated
parties at the commencement of the federal government. Men of the
old school—survivors of the contest of the Adams and Jefferson
times, with some exceptions, divided accordingly—the federalists
going for Mr. Adams, the republicans against him, with the mass of
the younger generation. The Senate by a decided majority, and the
House by a strong minority, were opposed to the policy of the new
President.
In 1826 occurred the famous debates in the Senate and the House,
on the proposed Congress of American States, to contract alliances to
guard against and prevent the establishment of any future European
colony within its borders. The mission though sanctioned was never
acted upon or carried out. It was authorized by very nearly a party
vote, the democracy as a party being against it. The President, Mr.
Adams, stated the objects of the Congress to be as follows: “An
agreement between all the parties represented at the meeting, that
each will guard, by its own means, against the establishment of any
future European colony within its own borders, may be advisable.
This was, more than two years since, announced by my predecessor
to the world, as a principle resulting from the emancipation of both
the American continents. It may be so developed to the new southern
nations, that they may feel it as an essential appendage to their
independence.”
Mr. Adams had been a member of Mr. Monroe’s cabinet, filling the
department from which the doctrine would emanate. The
enunciation by him as above of this “Monroe Doctrine,” as it is
called, is very different from what it has of late been supposed to be,
as binding the United States to guard all the territory of the New
World from European colonization. The message above quoted was
written at a time when the doctrine as enunciated by the former
President through the then Secretary was fresh in the mind of the
latter, and when he himself in a communication to the American
Senate was laying it down for the adoption of all the American
nations in a general congress of their deputies. According to
President Adams, this “Monroe Doctrine” (according to which it has
been of late believed that the United States were to stand guard over
the two Americas, and repulse all intrusive colonists from their
shores), was entirely confined to our own borders; that it was only
proposed to get the other States of the New World to agree that, each
for itself, and by its own means, should guard its own territories;
and, consequently, that the United States, so far from extending
gratuitous protection to the territories of other States, would neither
give, nor receive, aid in any such enterprise, but that each should use

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The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

Alexander Baturo (Editor)

1. Presidential Term Limits  1

11. Presidential Term Limits in Togo: Electoral Accountability

25. The Politics of Presidential Term Limits in Latin America:

3.1 Maximum term length (term length × term limit) 40

4.1 Recent judicial decisions on term limits in Latin America 57

xii List of Tables

20.1 Summary of rules on presidential terms in the US 406

Alexander Baturo is Associate Professor of Government, Dublin City

xiv List of Contributors

reform, research methods, and national identity, with an emphasis on cases in

secretary general of the Israeli Association of Public Law. In 2015, he was

xvi List of Contributors

Joseph L. Klesner is Provost of Kenyon College, Gambier, Ohio. He has

List of Contributors xvii

Dmitry Nurumov is currently an independent legal expert. He served as

xviii List of Contributors

and Dictators and Dictatorships. In addition to research she teaches modules

List of Contributors xix

List of Contributors xxi

xxii List of Contributors

materials, instructional workshops, and comparative expertise to constitutional

Presidential Term Limits

2 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

Similarly, the introduction of a two-term presidential limit in Egypt following

Presidential Term Limits 3

As a constitutional clause, the provision on presidential term limits is typically

4 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

Complete constitutional silence or simply specifying that the president can be

Presidential Term Limits 5

6 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

THE PROS AND CONS OF PRESIDENTIAL

Presidential Term Limits 7

regimes is the people generally, and in the case of parliamentary regimes is

8 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

countries with no history of peaceful incumbent turnover (Przeworski 2015).

THE INTRODUCTION, AB OLITION, AND

Changes to term limits can be observed when a constitution is amended. These

Presidential Term Limits 9

10 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

Presidential Term Limits 11

THE EFFECT OF PRESIDENTIAL TERM LIMITS

12 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

for democracy in a country? The standard assumption is that it does. Recall

Presidential Term Limits 13

While we cannot address the causal relationship between democracy and

14 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

Presidential Term Limits 15

Finally, Section 5, which includes an extended Conclusions chapter, steps

16 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

Theorizing Presidential Rotation

Once a marginal phenomenon, presidential term limits have become increasingly

20 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

suggests. Rotation accomplished many tasks in Classical Athens that it cannot

Political scientists regularly associate rotation in office with democracy. The

Theorizing Presidential Rotation 21

ROTATION IN ANCIENT GREECE

22 The Politics of Presidential Term Limits

The vast majority of administrative tasks performed in democratic Athens

This opposition finally culminated in the assembling of a

This treaty was negotiated by the Right Honorable James Lord

President Madison, in his message, had urged upon Congress a

1. Presidential Term Limits 1

3.1 Maximum term length (term length × term limit) 40

4.1 Recent judicial decisions on term limits in Latin America 57

20.1 Summary of rules on presidential terms in the US 406

List of Contributors xvii

List of Contributors xix

List of Contributors xxi

Presidential Term Limits 3

Presidential Term Limits 5

Presidential Term Limits 7

Presidential Term Limits 9

Presidential Term Limits 11

Presidential Term Limits 13

Presidential Term Limits 15

Theorizing Presidential Rotation 21