Comparative Perspective

Abstract

This article looks at the changes in party systems generally in modern democracies, and argues that many trends observed internationally – growing mistrust of parties, growing electoral de-alignment – are also observed in Chile. Hence any analysis of party change in Chile has to take into account what is happening in other countries with well-established party systems. The article argues that the comparison with the past tends to be limited to the exceptional 1964-1973 period and that a more extended analysis points to many continuities in the Chilean party system. Competing arguments over whether there is new party cleavage in Chile based on the opposition between support for authoritarianism or support for democracy are also examined* . PALABRAS CLAVE • Chile • Partidos Políticos • Elecciones • Coalición • Democratización • Financiamiento Político Analysis of the contemporary Chilean party system tends to assume (as does analysis of parties in many other countries) that there is a long-term process of party decline. Discussion concentrates on changes in the electoral behaviour of parties as if this were the only variable to analyse; and the comparison with the past tends to be limited to party behaviour in the 1964-1973 period – arguably an exceptional period in the story of party development in Chile. What is happening to parties in Chile needs to be related to the changes taking place world-wide in party systems. Recent writing on party systems (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002) has emphasised the need to analyse parties in terms of three related but distinct functions. Parties clearly play the major role in organising elections, in providing choices for the electorate, in stimulating and mobilising electoral * The second part of this article draws on material from my chapter in Chile to be published in Manuel Alcántara and Roberto Espíndola, (eds) forthcoming 2004, Political Parties in Latin America (London: Routledge Press) I would like to thank Fernando Sánchez for help with the data in this article. PARTY CHANGE IN CHILE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE 89 participation. It is relatively easy to discuss the role of parties in this dimension by electoral analysis. But parties also play other roles and provide other services in democratic systems. Parties are organisations, and need to be analysed as such.1 Parties train the political elite, they select candidates for office, they represent and aggregate interests, and they organise many aspects of political life. Analysis of parties as organisations is less well developed and requires a different kind of data from electoral analysis. Finally parties also have a role as agents of government. Parties play a vital role in creating stable government and in providing opposition to it, and are crucial as mechanisms for providing effective but also accountable government. Of course parties can fail disastrously on these last two dimensions – as organisations and as agents for providing government – and if they do so, then the consequences for political stability and democracy can be severe (as the cases of Argentina, Peru and Venezuela show). What is interesting is how far there is a world-wide change in the functions of parties, observable in a large number of countries. Recent research (Dalton and Wattenberg, 2002; Pharr and Putnam, 2000; Gunther et. al., 2002) has demonstrated a general international trend of increasing dissatisfaction with parties and increasing electoral de-alignment. This process has given rise to the much-commented ‘decline of the political parties’. But analysed as organisations the story is rather one of adaptation and change rather than decline (Mair, 1997). Parties are responding to a number of social and economic changes by changing the way they are organised and the functions they perform. What may be appropriate to party behaviour at a time of sharp class conflict grounded in competing ideologies is not appropriate to the changed conditions of the contemporary world. And, finally, it is difficult to discern any noticeable trend in the role of parties as providers of government – whether this is done badly or well does not fit into any overall trend or pattern. DOES CHILE SHARE THESE COMPARATIVE TRENDS? The answer broadly is that the trends observed internationally are also observable in Chile. Surveys of public opinion frequently ask the respondents if they have any degree of trust in political parties. It is also frequently asserted that trust in parties is low in Chile. In fact, in comparative terms, Chile occupies a middle position between the low of 4% level of trust in Argentina to the (not very) high of 36% in Holland and Denmark. Figure 1 indicates that the level of trust in parties in Chile is not very different from that in France or Britain. 1 The forthcoming book by Alcantara and Espíndola is intended to address this need for concentrating attention on.