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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
The far-reaching electoral reforms implemented before
the 1989
elections represented a further attempt to transform
Chile's party
structure into a moderate two-party system. The
constitution of
1925 had established a system of proportional
representation to
allocate seats in multimember districts, the most widely
used
system in Latin America and Europe. For the elections to
the
Chamber of Deputies, the country was divided into
twenty-eights
districts, each electing between one and eighteen deputies
for a
total of 150, producing an average district delegation of
5.4
deputies. Although implementation of the proportional
representation system was not responsible for the
emergence of the
country's multiparty system, it encouraged party
fragmentation,
particularly before 1960, when parties were allowed to
form pacts
with each other in constituting individual lists.
Women were granted the vote for municipal elections in
1934 and
for national elections in 1949. Chile has a lively history
of
women's civic and political organizations that goes back
to the
early decades of the twentieth century, including the
formation of
two political parties led by women, one of which, the
Feminine
Civic Party (Partido CĂvico Femenino), elected its main
leader to
the Senate before it faded from the scene in the
mid-1950s.
However, there are still conspicuously few women in
national
politics an din top government positions. Only six women
were
elected to Congress in 1989, and only one woman held
ministerial
rank in President Aylwin's government. Yet close to half
of all
Chileans who were affiliated with parties in 1992 were
women, and
slightly more than half of the electorate is composed of
women.
The military government redrew electoral boundaries to
create
sixty legislative districts, each of which would send two
representatives to the Chamber of Deputies. Redistricting
favored
smaller and more rural districts that were deliberately
designed to
favor progovernment parties. Thus, one vote in District
52, which
was a government stronghold in the plebiscite, was worth
three
times more than one vote in District 18, in which the
opposition
had fared better. By reducing the electoral districts to
an average
representation of two deputies per district, the military
authorities sought to create an electoral formula that
would
provide supporters of the Pinochet regime with a majority
of the
seats in the legislature, with a level of support
comparable to
Pinochet's vote in the plebiscite, or about 40 percent of
the
turnout.
According to the new law, parties or coalitions
continue to
present lists with a candidate for each of the two seats
to be
filled. The law considers both the votes for the total
list and the
votes for individual candidates. The first seat is awarded
to the
party or coalition with a plurality of votes. But the
first- place
party list must receive twice the vote of the second-place
list, if
it is to win the second seat. This means that in a
two-list contest
a party can obtain one seat with only 33.4 percent of the
vote,
whereas a party must take 66.7 percent of the vote to gain
both
seats. Any electoral support that the largest party gets
beyond the
33.4 percent threshold is effectively wasted unless that
party
attains the 66.7 percent level.
The designers of the electoral system considered the
worst-case
scenario to be one that assumed a complete unity of
purpose among
the anti-Pinochet forces, a unity that would at best
provide them
with 50 percent of Congress. Government officials were
convinced
that another scenario was more likely: the parties of the
centerleft would soon fragment, unable to maintain the unity
born of
their common desire to defeat Pinochet. The military
government
envisioned multiple lists, with the list of the right
being the
largest, able to double the next competing list in many
constituencies and thus assuring the promilitary groups at
least
half of all elected representation, if not a comfortable
majority.
For the parties of the right, the worst-case scenario
came to
pass. Showing remarkable focus and discipline, the
fourteen parties
of the opposition structured a common list and chose a
common
presidential candidate, and as a result the coalition
garnered a
majority of the elected seats. The
binomial electoral
system (see Glossary) did, however, benefit the right. The
National
Renewal
Party obtained many more seats than it should have in
light of the
percentages of the vote it received nationally. The system
also
forced parties to coalesce into large blocs to maximize
their
strengths. The result was two broad coalitions, not a
two-party
system. Indeed, the results of the 1989 congressional
elections,
despite the requirements of the binomial system and the
constitution that broad slates be formed by these party
coalitions,
reveals that the Chilean electorate split its vote for
individual
candidates in a manner reminiscent of traditional
tendencies. Thus,
the right obtained 38 percent of the vote; the center, 24
percent;
and the left 24.3 percent.
Survey research corroborated that the electorate was
likely to
continue to identify with left-right terms of reference.
In March
1993, about 22.8 percent of respondents classified
themselves as
politically right or center-right; 24.6 percent as center;
and 33.7
percent as center-left. Only 19 percent refused to opt for
an
ideological identification (see
table 40, Appendix). These
figures
differ somewhat from the electoral results reported
previously but
are consistent with trends indicating that the right lost
some of
its appeal during the Aylwin government, while the
moderate left
gained.
Despite attempts at political engineering, not only did
Chileans continue to identify with broad ideological
tendencies,
they also identified with a wide range of parties
explicitly
considered to embody those tendencies. In surveys, between
70
percent and 80 percent of all Chileans identified
themselves with
particular parties, a high level considering the many
years of
military rule and the experience of other democratic
countries.
Identification with individual parties increased during
the first
three years of the Aylwin government. In the March 1993
survey,
more than a third of the respondents identified themselves
with the
Christian Democrats, 20 percent with the leading parties
of the
left, and 20 percent with the principal parties of the
right. The
rest identified themselves with smaller parties of the
left,
center, and right (see
table 41, Appendix).
The survey findings do not mean that the ideological
polarization of the past has remained constant. The
Chilean
electorate still segments itself into three roughly equal
thirds,
but the distance between its left and right extremes have
narrowed
substantially. With its more radical program, the PCCh was
not able
to win more than 6.5 percent of the vote in municipal
elections. In
surveys taken during the 1990-93 period, fewer than 2
percent of
respondents preferred the PCCh. Right-wing nationalist
parties
associated with the military government had even less
appeal and
did not ever register on surveys. The far left of the
Socialist
Party had lost ground to the more moderate tendencies of
the party,
and the authoritarian right had developed no significant
electoral
following. Ideological moderation also characterized the
centrist
Christian Democrats, who no longer defended the "third
way" between
Marxists and capitalists that they advocated in the 1960s.
Perhaps
the strongest indication of programmatic moderation was
the
consensus in postmilitary Chile on free-market economics
and the
important role of the private sector in national
development.
As Chile approached the twenty-first century,
differences among
parties were no longer based on sharply differing visions
of
utopias. Ideological differences now concerned more
concrete
matters, such as the degree of government involvement in
social
services and welfare or, increasingly, moral questions
such as
divorce and abortion. A narrowing of programmatic
differences did
not mean, however, that the intensely competitive,
multiparty
nature of Chilean politics was likely to change in the
near future.
Data as of March 1994
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