This article attempts to evaluate whether the adoption of a mixed electoral system for the lower House in Venezuela, as of the 1993 elections, attained the results that the main actors involved in planning and implementing it were expecting. It is not our intention to defend any particular type of electoral system nor to point out the advantages and disadvantages of each type. Our goal is simply to evaluate the results of one case in which the mixed system was adopted and compare them to what actors involved in the changes were actually expecting. It is only through rigorous analysis along these lines that we can discover whether in practice expectations were fulfilled or frustrated. Although it would be possible to anticipate our evaluation, this would not provide the empirical foundations that an exercise such as the one we present here has. Work that constrasts actors' intentions with the results of the implantation of a mixed system is important since, dealing with an uncommon formula whose results are little known outside of specialists' circles, in many countries (Brazil included) this system has been assumed to be a solution to the problems that have been detected under currently-existing ones. What we will attempt to show here is that, based on the Venezuelan example, in practice things tend to be more complicated. Our working hypothesis is that expectations have been frustrated, both for those who sought to decrease the influence of parties on the definition of the candidates and elected parliament members and over representatives' actions, as well as for those belonging to traditional political groups seeking to preserve their dominance.
Venezuela; mixed electoral systems; actors' intentions; lower House
