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First published January 1992

Democratization and the Institutionalization of Latin American Political Parties

ROBERT H. DIXView all authors and affiliations
Volume 24, Issue 4
https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414092024004004

Abstract

In this article, the author assesses the prospects for the consolidation of democracy in Latin America in the 1990s, compared with the failure to achieve that goal in the 1960s, by examining the institutionalization of political parties in the two time periods. Samuel Huntington's criteria of institutionalization (adaptability, complexity, autonomy, and coherence) are used and employ a variety of indicators (some empirical, some more judgmental) to assess the degree of change between the 1960s and the 1980s. He concludes that, although there is significant variation among countries, for the majority of them, and for the Latin American region as a whole, political parties have indeed become somewhat more institutionalized over time, thereby modestly enhancing the prospects for the consolidation of democracy in the 1990s.

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1.
1. Latin America is defined here to include the independent nations of the western hemisphere with Iberian cultural origins, thus excluding Haiti and the former British and Dutch possessions of the Caribbean. Cuba will be excluded from the analysis because it has held no national elections since the rigged one of 1958, and for most of the intervening years, it has literally had only one political party (the only such case in Latin America).
2.
2. Democracy is herein defined in the narrow political sense of “polyarchy” (Dahl, 1971), entailing the two dimensions of inclusion or electoral participation, and public contestation. The recent resurgence of democracy in Latin America has involved notable advances on both dimensions. At the same time, it is admittedly the case that elections, although a necessary component of democracy, are not sufficient for it and that the distinction between a “dictablanda” (“soft dictatorship”) and a “democradura” (“hard democracy”) is not always a clear-cut one.
3.
3. Indeed, much of the earlier literature on democratization largely ignored parties, and for that matter, political institutions in general, in favor of economic, social, cultural, and historical variables. Guillermo O'Donnell (1973) argued that late-developing, dependent countries like those of Latin America tended to reach a point where the populist coalitions that sustained a form of democracy during the stage of import-substitution industrialization broke up when the latter stage became “exhausted,” leading to the onset of the bureaucratic-authoritarian regimes that came to power in the Southern Cone during the 1960s and 1970s. Although much of the more recent literature on democratic breakdown and democratic consolidation is much less deterministic, stressing instead the importance of leadership and choice and paying somewhat more attention to the importance of parties, the latter are hardly central. (Baloyra, 1987; Linz & Stepan, 1978; Malloy & Seligson, 1987; O'Donnell et al., 1986). For Diamond et al. (1989), however, parties as well as other institutions, become critical variables.
4.
4. The latter figure is conservative. If the elements of continuity apparent in certain “new” parties were taken into account, the 1989 figure would be higher.
5.
5. Even so, several of the new parties manifest considerable continuity with some of their predecessors in leadership, membership, and even in name (Wesson & Fleischer, 1983).
6.
6. The PRD, under the leadership of Juan Bosch, held power for a few months in 1963 following the 1962 elections, but its stay in power was too brief to permit it to experience a real change in role at that time.
7.
7. Nicaragua's FSLN (Sandinistas) was, however, defeated electorally in February 1990 and yielded power to the victors in April. Paraguay's governing Colorados have been out of power at different times during their long history, but they have been the party of government for so long (more than 4 decades) that the institutional memory of opposition must by now be extremely weak.
8.
8. In their recently published book, McDonald and Ruhl (1989) cite personalism as one of the enduring features of Latin American politics. Many of their descriptions of the politics of individual countries bear them out.
9.
9. Velasco, on five separate occasions president of Ecuador (his last term ending in 1972), was said to have a “personal repugnance for administrative and organizational structures” and to have actively worked against the creation of an enduring party (Martz, 1972, p. 122).
10.
10. It is, of course, debatable whether, say, Britain's Labor party has been less of an institution for being under the predominant influence of labor unions (at least in the past), although for Huntington this was clearly the case. In any event, there have been very few such parties in Latin America. A second indicator of the autonomy of a party from other social groups is leadership attained primarily by those who have served apprenticeships in lower party positions, that is, by party professionals or careerists (Huntington, 1968). Nevertheless, such an indicator is substantially collinear with that of generational age. The reader is referred to Table 1 for this rough measure of party autonomy.
11.
11. Brazil's PT, with a labor-union leader at its head (see above), at first glance appears to be something of an exception. Yet after it came in second in the first round of presidential voting in 1989, it clearly became more populist in the second round in an effort to win the presidency. Since its electoral defeat, the trend has evidently continued, despite some internal party resistance (Latin American Weekly Report, June 28, 1990).
12.
12. This is not to say that Chile has not had parties that might be considered nearly single-class parties as well, particularly the Communist party. Yet the Socialist party has been notably a cross-class party over time and was a principal supporter of the populist Carlos Ibáñez for president in 1952. With the recent restoration of democracy, a reconstituted Left has clearly sought to moderate and broaden its appeals; the parties of the Right have done much the same.
13.
13. Here our criterion of institutionalization diverges from that of Huntington, who refers to organizations per se in his discussion of coherence (1968). A measure of intraparty factionalism would presumably serve the purpose, but lack of information on this point for many of the lesser-known parties makes its use here problematical. Moreover, an indicator of system coherence would seem to add a useful, otherwise unexamined, dimension to our analysis.
14.
14. The fractionalization index is [ILLEGIBLE] where Ti = any party's decimal share of the vote.
15.
15. Colombia's traditional two-party pattern had been more fragmented than usual during the early 1960s as a result of a coalition agreement between the Liberals and Conservatives (the National Front) that, although it mandated power-sharing between the parties, had the effect of dividing them into organized factions that competed openly with each other in elections.
16.
16. It is quite true, of course, as Lijphart (1968) argued, on the basis of largely European evidence, that extreme fractionalization is not necessarily averse to democratic stability (nor to party institutionalization). The case of Chile, in Latin America, would seem to confirm that conclusion. However, the parties in most fragmented Latin American systems tend not to have the kind of class and religious roots, and the coherent structures, that they have had in Europe or Chile. Moreover, fractionalization as an indicator of democratic coherence taps another dimension not relevant in the European case, namely, that very low scores (below .300) indicate a coherence that is not democratic. Increases in the index therefore denote increases in political pluralism, a tendency worth noting in the Latin American case.
17.
17. See Mainwaring (1988):
In comparative perspective, Brazil stands out as an extraordinary case of party underdevelopment. A country with the eighth largest economy in the capitalist world is still characterized by parties with ephemeral existences, weak identities, and uncertain futures.... Unless parties are capable of winning popular confidence, acting with autonomy vis-a-vis the executive, and becoming stable enough for a system of democratic accountability to be established, prospects for constructing a consolidated democracy are poor indeed. (p. 93)

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Volume 24, Issue 4
Pages: 488 - 511
Article first published: January 1992
Issue published: January 1992

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ROBERT H. DIX
Rice University
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