#164 Origins and Characteristics of the Chilean Party Systems: A Proposal for a Parliamentary Form of Government

By Arturo Valenzuela

From the Introduction 

Only a few days after the overthrow of the 1973 government of Salvador Allende, the governing military junta in Chile issued a decree banning some political parties and declaring others in "recess." For the next eleven years, the party leadership has struggled to survive under what became the longest lasting government in Chilean history. The military authorities had correctly concluded that if they were to impose their own imprint on the country they would have to curb all party activity. In few other countries had parties played as prominent a role and for as long a period of time as they had in Chile. Parties recruited leaders and determined policy options in Chile's powerful executive and legislative branches. But parties also structured cleavages throughout the society. Their infuence extended into most interest groups, community associations, educational institutions and even soccer clubs and churches. Candidates for union offices and high school and university leadership positions ran on party platforms, and party organizations paid as much attention to the outcome as they did to that of congressional by-elections.

Any discussion of the prospects for redemocratization and the role of Chilean parties must bear these historical facts in mind. While military regimes may have certain common characteristics, their long-term impact is more dependent on the nature of the preexisting social and political institutions on which they seek to impose their policies, than on the policies themselves. But as the very presence of a military government demonstrates that the system has experienced a profound crisis. It is thus equally important to clarify the extent to which the preexisting system had disintegrated before military rule. Was the Chilean party system irrevocably destroyed before the coup? If not, did the experience of military rule accomplish this task? If the system had broken down severely beforehand, would the experience of military government be more likely to produce a similar or radically different party system once civilian rule was restored? Whether similar or different, what is the role for constitutional or political engineering in moving toward redemocratization? In answering these questions, Valenzuela proposes in this essay a fundamental change in Chile's institutional system from a presidential form of governemetn to a parliamentary form as the best way to create politilal stabilty.