ARTICLE mANUSCRIPTS

  • "Consequences of Constituent Assembly Reform for Democracy"
  • "Decentralization, Representation, and Women’s Political Engagement," with Sara Niedzwiecki
  • ​"Protest and Executive Decree Issuance in Ecuador," with Andrew Le, Kansas State Undergraduate
  • “Executive-Legislative Conflict and Presidential Approval in Ecuador”
  • "Popular Presidents and Unilateral Action: The effects of executive approval and legislative opposition on executive decree issuance in Latin America," with Inaki Sagarzazu and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield
  • "The Executive Decree Dataset," with Inaki Sagarzazu and Sarah Shair-Rosenfield
  • ​"Women Presidential Candidates of Latin America," with Farida Jalalzai

Book Manuscript

Ambitious Reform: Executives, Constituent Assemblies, and Democracy in Contemporary Latin America
Executives in democracies often want to pass ambitious reforms but confront the institutional constraints of the democratic process. When they lack legislative majorities, executives are generally unable to enact proposals of sweeping change. In certain cases, however, executives can use constituent assemblies—a well-established mechanism of constitutional reform wherein a separately elected body is tasked with rewriting the constitution from scratch—to sidestep a hostile legislature without breaking the parameters of political democracy.

Ambitious Reform analyzes constituent assemblies as an executive tool to restructure laws or political institutions and to redistribute political power in contemporary Latin America. Of many potential mechanisms for reform, executives choose to attempt this process under several conditions, the most important of which are insufficient legislative support and a willingness to bend institutional rules. Stoyan argues that, to have success with this strategy, the executive requires two factors: mobilizational leverage, the ability to rally popular support behind the reform agenda, and institutional leverage, the ability to convince other institutions to allow the reform process to proceed.
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This research also examines the consequences of constituent assembly reforms on democracy, showing how executives undercut institutions of liberal representative democracy while retaining legitimacy, at least in the short term, by relying on mechanisms of direct democracy and constitutional reform. The process, Stoyan argues, may enhance one pillar of democracy—participation—while undermining another—contestation.

Ambitious Reform takes a mixed-methods approach, drawing upon extensive fieldwork and 118 elite interviews in Bolivia and Ecuador with constitutional lawyers, representatives from constituent assemblies and legislatures, former presidents, judges, and bureaucrats close to the executive. The book offers an enhanced understanding of executive policymaking, executive-legislative relations, and institutional change. It shows how popular executives maneuver institutions at the margins of democracy. It also reveals that the consequences of reform for democracy are determined not only by substantive content but also by the nature of the process itself.
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Keywords: constituent assemblies; institutional change; democracy; executive-legislative relations; Latin America

Grants & Awards

  • Faculty Development Award, 2018, Kansas State University
  • ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series Award, 2018, Office for the Advancement of Women in Science and Engineering
  • Faculty Development Award, 2016, Kansas State University
  • Big 12 Faculty Fellowship, 2016, Kansas State University
  • Faculty Enhancement Program Award, 2016, Kansas State University
  • University Small Research Grant, 2015, Kansas State University
  • ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series Award, 2015, Office for the Advancement of Women in Science and Engineering