Presidential Failure—or Party Failure? A Review Article

Why Presidents Fail: Political Parties and Government Survival in Latin America by Christopher A. Martínez is a rigorous and innovative contribution to the study of presidential instability. In it, Martínez argues that the institutionalization and relative strength of political parties, particularly the president's own party, are central to understanding why some presidents are removed from office whereas others survive political crises. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and a mixed-methods approach, the book reframes conventional accounts of executive failure, emphasizing long-term partisan dynamics over immediate economic or social triggers. Although the book is empirically rich and theoretically valuable, this review also highlights some limitations, including the omission of key extra-institutional actors like the military and the exclusion of relevant cases outside Latin America. Nonetheless, Martínez's core insight, that party institutionalization plays a pivotal role in democratic stability, offers both a timely scholarly intervention and a normative call to strengthen party systems across the region's fragile presidential democracies.