Author: Nicolás Somma / Political Geography: Chile

Author:: J. Samuel Valenzuela, Timothy R. Scully, and Nicolás Somma
Publication Date:: 12-2016
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:: Recent literature on the Chilean party system has noted that its characteristics changed under the impact of Pinochet's long dictatorship. The right allegedly became a tool for maintaining his regime's “legacies,” and this generated a binary pattern of electoral competition between “pro-authoritarian” and “prodemocratic” forces after the return to democracy. The literature has also stressed that levels of identification with the nation's parties have plummeted, thereby questioning the extent to which the Chilean party system is an institutionalized one. And yet all analysts acknowledge, without being able to explain, that the distribution of voter options for the main parties from one election to the next has continued to be largely stable
Topic:: International Affairs
Political Geography:: Chile

Author:: Nicolás Somma, Timothy R. Scully, and J. Samuel Valenzuela
Publication Date:: 03-2007
Content Type:: Working Paper
Institution:: Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:: Analysts of Chilean politics assert that the Pinochet dictatorship created a new political cleavage characterized as “authoritarianism versus democracy.” It fostered the formation of two party coalitions that took positions for and against Pinochet's continuation as head of state in the plebiscite that he lost in October 1988. As a result, they argue, while the religious and class cleavages had powerfully shaped voter options and the party system in the pre-dictatorship past, these fissures have lost their salience in the current context.
Topic:: Development, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:: South America and Chile

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