POLITICAL PARTIES AND PARTY SYSTEMS IN LATIN AMERICA IN A CONTEXT OF PARLIAMENTARIZATION
Over recent decades, Latin American political systems have undergone significant structural transformations. One of the most significant has been the growing fragmentation of party systems. As the effective number of parties has increased and many party systems have become more volatile, presidents have found it increasingly difficult to count on stable legislative majorities. This has contributed to the development of forms of ‘coalitional presidentialism,’ in which governability depends less on a single presidential party and more on agreements among multiple parties.
A second, related development concerns the growing use of impeachment procedures against presidents. In principle, impeachment is a mechanism of constitutional accountability and does not allow a president to be removed for purely political reasons. In practice, however, it has sometimes functioned as a political instrument used by legislative majorities or opposition coalitions to remove presidents. This raises the question of whether Latin American presidential systems are acquiring certain parliamentary traits: although the president’s survival is formally independent of parliament, in practice it may become more dependent on congressional support.
However, properly parliamentary systems tend to have strong parties that act as unitary actors. Does the ‘parliamentarization’ of presidential systems imply a trend toward stronger, more consolidated parties?
Taking this question as a starting point, this symposium focuses on the evolution of political parties and party systems in Latin American presidential regimes. A first set of questions concerns the transformation of party systems. How have Latin American party systems evolved in terms of the effective number of parties, electoral volatility and ideological positioning? To what extent are these changes related to institutional frameworks, particularly electoral systems or their reforms? Do the emerging multiparty systems correspond to what Giovanni Sartori conceptualized as moderate pluralism or polarized pluralism?
A second set of questions concerns the internal organization of political parties. Is there a trend toward stronger, more consolidated parties, characterized by stable organizational structures, a significant membership base and cohesive parliamentary groups? Or do parties remain weakly institutionalized electoral vehicles serving individual leaders, regional brokers or personalist movements? How centralized are Latin American parties, and to what extent does their internal organization reflect broader territorial dynamics such as regionalization, federalism or decentralization? How have legal reforms affected party organization, candidate selection, internal democracy and legislative cohesion? How do rules on party and campaign financing affect party consolidation and organization?
Both comparative studies and in-depth case studies examining how party systems and party organization have changed in recent decades are welcome.
