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Begin New Search Political Geography Chile Author Timothy R. Scully

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. 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

3. The Political Underpinnings of Economic Liberalization in Chile

Author:
Timothy R. Scully
Publication Date:
07-1994
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The contemporary consensus over economic policy-making in Chile and the democratic government's capacity to effectively implement these policies are powerfully shaped by a combination of institutional legacies from Chile's democratic past and certain institutional holdovers from the Pinochet regime. This paper reviews briefly the performance of the Chilean economy under the Concertation government headed by Patricio Aylwin. It then argues that Chile's democratic government has been uniquely endowed with a capacity to successfully sustain economic liberalization, in part because of the reappearance of a well-institutionalized party system, in part because of certain nondemocratic limits built into the democratic game during the Pinochet regime. Over the medium term, however, these limits may pose a threat to the consensual style of politics that has come to characterize the post-Pinochet political arena in Chile, and ultimately may threaten democratic political stability if left unaddressed.
Topic:
Economics, Governance, Democracy, and Liberalization
Political Geography:
South America and Chile

4. From Democracy to Democracy: Continuities and Changes of Electoral Choices and the Party System in Chile

Author:
Timothy R. Scully and J. Samuel Valenzuela
Publication Date:
07-1993
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
After almost seventeen years of authoritarian rule with no regular national elections, Chileans have once again expressed themselves in the polls. The central question addressed in this paper is the extent to which there are continuities in the current elections with the past choices of the voters. This question is examined by comparing current vote totals by party and by tendency with those of the past, and by correlating the votes in the elections of 1969, 1970, and 1973 with the 1988 plebiscite and the 1989 presidential and parliamentary elections. The results show that there is a remarkable consistency of electoral choices in the country, which is still divided into left, center, and right tendencies. And yet there have been changes. New party labels have emerged, and the party system is currently much more centripetal than it was in the past, given a significant degree of consensus among the main political forces over the value of democracy as well as over fundamental socioeconomic policies. Whether these changes will prove to be long lasting in the face of renewed electoral competition over the next years is still an open question.
Topic:
Authoritarianism, Democracy, Voting Behavior, and Political Behavior
Political Geography:
South America and Chile