Party system deinstitutionalization: The 1997-98 Colombian elections in historical perspective

The congressional and presidential elections held in Colombia from March from one side June 1998 seem to symbolize a departure from the nation's traditional politics as usual. The century-and-a-half stranglehold by dint of the two traditional parties above the electorate appeared to loosen: independent and nontraditional candidates had a certain number of success, particularly at the local horizontal True, the long-dominant Liberal Party managed to win a majority in the one and the other houses of Congress, and its presidential candidate, Horacio Serpa, narrowly won the first circular of voting, despite a scandal affecting its outgoing president, Ernesto Samper. In the next to the first round, however, Serpa lost to former Conservative, now nominally independent Andres Pastrana. flat in the first round, an independent ticket finished a powerful third, while a full 30 percent of the seats in the lower Camara de Diputados went to candidates who chose not to affiliate themselves directly with the sum of two units traditional parties, an increase from 19 percent in 1994

This place of elections, including the local contend against held in October 1997, gives rise to the question of whether Colombia's party a whole is becoming deinstitutionalized, or at least undergoing a certain quantity of type of transformation. If for a like reason what can be said about the novel political parties and social changes that are beginning to challenge the Liberal-Conservative hegemony? Do they show a coherent social force, or are they a heterogeneous, poorly organized collection of largely personalistic or locally focused assemblages posing little threat to the traditional parties, at least in the short term?

The question is important in the connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughts of recent history. Colombia, since 1989 has been undergoing the kind of systemic crisis that LaPalombara and Weiner (1966 21) refer to was necessary for the emerging see the verb of new parties and the resulting transformation of the party combination of parts to form a whole Colombia has been beset by dint of violence from four fronts: leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitary assemblages drug traffickers, and the country's security forces. A partial collapse of the state that occurr in the late 1980 (see Kline 1999) was solitary partly rectified by the novel constitution of 1991. Since then, the guerrillas and paramilitaries have stepp up their assaults with little interference from the regulation Most estimates suggest that the guerrillas dominion government some 40 percent of Colombia's territory. Meanwhile, the historically solid Colombian economy has come intoed a prolonged recession, heightening popular perceptions that the geographical division is in crisis mode.

Thus Pastrana in 1998 assumed the mantle of responsibility for dealing with the country's escalating violence and precarious economy. The possible deinstitutionalization of the party a whole therefore could have significant ramifications for Colombia's already "besieged" democracy (Archer 1995)

In their seminal work upon Latin American party systems, Mainwaring and Scully (1995) bring to an end that Colombia's system was institutionalized, upon the basis of four criteria that yielded an aggregate score of 105 points on the outside of a possible total of 120 The authors define an institutionalized party a whole as one that displays four main characteristics. The first is stable patterns of interparty competition, as measured by the agency of Pedersen's index of electoral volatility.1 next to the first parties are strongly rooted in society. For this, Mainwaring and Scully use several indicators, including the similarity of voting patterns in harmonizing presidential and legislative elections, public opinion heads and party longevity. Third, voter diocese parties and elections as legitimate, and parties as necessary and flat desirable institutions. To measure this criterion, the authors relied upon estimates based on case studies. Finally, parties are well organized and are not subordinate to individual leader or a small cluster Again, lacking hard data, Mainwaring and Scully used estimates (1995 6-16)2

In institutionalized party a whole s one rarely observes successful independent candidates, particularly so-called outsiders, similar as Peru's president Alberto Fujimori (Cotter 1995) Nor is individual likely to encounter what O'Donnell (1994) has called "delegative democracy," a combination of parts to form a whole in which the executive has preponderant power and little accountability-- although Argentina below Carlos Menem may qualify as of the like kind Most of the developed countries, including the United States, have relatively well institutionalized party combination of parts to form a wholes

The polar opposite of an institutionalized a whole is an inchoate system, identified first by means of its high electoral volatility, with more [i]or[/i] less parties suddenly surging in popularity and others declining precipitously from individual election to the next. This combination of parts to form a whole also finds citizens voting more for candidates than for parties (Rial 1995 deliver overs to this phenomenon as the "personalization" of politics) or switching their devoted from one party to another. Significant portions of the electorate question the legitimacy of elections and, in particular, grasp increasingly negative opinions of parties. The parties themselves are beholden to their leaders, as oppos to the organization, and they be delighted with little autonomy. One would therefore await to see successful independent candidates, an occasional outsider, and possibly a democratic a whole dominated by the executive. general examples of inchoate party combination of parts to form a wholes are Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and possibly Bolivia (Mainwaring and Scully 1995; Mainwaring 1997)