Chile's Constitutional Chaos Piscopo, Jennifer M; Siavelis, Peter M
Journal of democracy,
2023, 2023-01-00, 20230101, Letnik:
34, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
On 4 September 2022, Chilean voters resoundingly rejected a progressive new constitution that offered a blueprint for social democracy. Some observers argue that Chile wisely escaped a narrow brush ...with a brand of authoritarian leftism long dominant in Latin America. This interpretation is simplistic and obscures the wider forces of illiberalism that contributed to the constitution's defeat. With the intrusion of everyday politics into the process, any reboot of the constitutional process will likely lead to a document that offers a much narrower vision of democracy.
We examine women’s access to campaign resources using data from all 960 candidates competing in Chile’s 2017 legislative elections. Even when controlling for district characteristics, women ...candidates receive less money in party transfers, bank loans, and donations; place fewer personal funds in their campaigns; and have fewer resources overall. However, previous experience and incumbency narrow the gap. When women are newcomers, gender serves as an important cue about candidate quality and funders default to favoring men. Our results lend credence to practitioners’ claims that money disadvantages women candidates in democracies, but focuses attention on the disadvantage faced by women newcomers. Moreover, this gender gap in campaign funding exists despite a gendered electoral financing scheme designed to make political actors more likely to invest in women’s campaigns. While increasingly popular among development experts, our research suggests such schemes might be insufficient for equalizing campaign funding between men and women.
This article analyzes the challenges to democratic representation in contemporary Chile, with an institutional focus. I argue that the post-authoritarian model of politics was deeply constrained by ...institutions and practices inherited by democratic authorities and reinforced by the model of transitional politics and its series of informal institutions, which first facilitated, but then hindered democratic performance. While this does not point to a regime-threatening crisis, there are deep challenges to representation and a desire for a different model of politics that is more capable of resolving conflicts and satisfying citizen demands. I posit that, until now, Chile's formal and informal institutions have privileged stability over representation, accountability, and legitimacy. Consequently, it has fallen to social movements to set the agenda for change aimed at addressing Chile's deeper problems of political and social inequality. I argue that institutional reforms are a necessary, yet insufficient, antidote to current challenges of representation.
Statement of Philosophy and Mission Benabdallah, Lina; Esarey, Justin; Siavelis, Peter M. ...
PS, political science & politics,
01/2023, Letnik:
56, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Ni Chicha ni Limoná Morgenstern, Scott; Polga-Hecimovich, John; Siavelis, Peter M
Party politics,
09/2014, Letnik:
20, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Chile’s parties have been characterized as ‘European’ in their development and institutionalization, but ‘Latin American’ in their high degree of political localism. Yet the specialized literature ...has not tested these tendencies nor developed a theory as to how they may coexist. Using the concept of party nationalization, we establish the veracity of the claims in the literature and propose a theory of static and dynamic nationalization development. We show that, as in Western European systems, Chile’s political parties exhibited progressive static nationalization until 1973. Since re-democratization, parties have demonstrated low levels of static nationalization, while the coalitions are highly nationalized. Concurrently, both parties and the coalitions have exhibited low levels of dynamic nationalization like parties throughout Latin America. We argue that these conflicting patterns are due to the interactive effect of functional cleavages and electoral institutions.
There is virtually no literature on informal presidential advisory networks in Latin America. By employing Chile as a theoretically grounded case study, this article demonstrates that multiparty ...coalition management inserts unique tensions into the presidential advisory equation, and thus unique challenges for presidents in achieving their governing goals when compared to single party government. It also contributes to theory building by underscoring how the interaction between formal portfolio distribution and informal advisory networks helps determine success of cross‐party power sharing arrangements. Finally, it makes some tentative suggestions concerning the optimal formula for presidents to resolve tensions between formal and informal advisory networks under multiparty presidentialism.
This research note summarizes initial research from a wider project on the determinants of candidate selection procedures. It seeks to contribute to the growing literature on candidate selection by ...distinguishing transitional and institutionalized democracies. First, it provides a review of the existing literature, with particular emphasis placed on identifying the existing hypotheses on the determinants of candidate selection procedures. Second, it elucidates why transitional polities differently constrain the choice of legislative candidate selection procedures compared to institutionalized democracies. Third, several hypotheses derived from the literature indicate that the barriers to adopting inclusive legislative candidate selection procedures are higher in transitional than in institutionalized democracies.
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