Causes and Outcomes of presidential breakdowns in Latin America during the Third Wave of Democratization

The goal is to tap into the causes of political conflicts in Latin America and provide a better, conceptual, understanding of vertical and horizontal (deadlock) conflicts in the presidential regimes in the region. Furthermore, the project seeks to provide a new, and challenging, understanding of one immediate consequence of the above-mentioned conflicts, namely the presidential interruptions. Here I challenge the common understanding of presidential interruptions as mere democratic crises, and provide a n ew typology of presidential interruptions. Not only will this project lead to a better understanding of what causes political conflicts in the region, it will also provide us with better conceptual tools of measuring and understanding these conflicts. T he project will present a new and innovative data-set on political conflicts based on the Latin American Weekly Report, and distinguish between vertical and horizontal conflicts. Furthermore, the project has already created a new typology of presidential interruptions, an outcome of vertical and horizontal conflicts in Latin America, and will present new and challenging ideas of how to understand the phenomenon of presidential interruptions and discuss how these are related to vertical and horizontal conf licts in third wave Latin American presidential democracies.