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1. Resilience and Change: The Party System in Redemocratized 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

2. Social and Political Effects of Religiosity and Religious Identities in Latin America

Author:
Timothy R. Scully, Samuel Valenzuela, and Nicolás Somma
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This paper provides an empirical examination of the effects of religiosity and of religious identities on a broad range of attitudes in seven Latin American countries. It is based on ECosociAl, a new national survey of large urban areas. The topics covered in the paper include the extent to which these religious variables affect levels of civic participation, the propensity to vote in elections, self-placement on the left-to-right ideological scale, levels of happiness, confidence in institutions and in other people, and the degrees of tolerance or acceptance of people of different beliefs, personal attributes, or social condition.
Topic:
Religion
Political Geography:
Latin America

3. The Enduring Presence of Religion in Chilean Ideological Positionings and Voter Options

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