The article explores how political constraints affect the likelihood of countries defaulting on their debts. The researchers use a model that includes legislative bargaining and default scenarios to show that higher political constraints make default less likely, as more regions need to share the burden of a default. However, if defaulting is very costly, even governments with lower political constraints may still default less often. Evidence from South American countries supports these findings. The model calibrated to Argentina confirms that higher political constraints reduce the chances of default. In a hypothetical scenario with even stricter political constraints, Argentina's default in 2001 could not have been avoided.