Democratic Loyalty of Opposition Parties in Latin America (1978-2010): An Institutionalist Explanation

ABSTRACT

The main question of this article is: under what conditions are the Latin American opposition parties loyal or disloyal to democracy? Aiming to answer this question, we hope to contribute to the construction of a theory of the democratic loyalty of the opposition parties in Latin America after the military dictatorships (1978-2010). To achieve this goal, we propose an operational definition of the loyalty of the opposition parties, sorted out by countries. Next, we formulated a simple theoretical model of its variation, whose central hypothesis is that the democratic loyalty of the opposition parties depends to a large extent on the degree of institutional inclusion/exclusion it faces. It is argued that the more inclusive institutional designs are accompanied by loyal partisan oppositions, while the more exclusive systems result in more disloyal oppositions. Institutional exclusion is operationalized in three dimensions: the legislative electoral system, the presidential powers and the dispersion of institutional power. Finally, specific hypotheses are tested through the estimation of statistical models. Statistical analysis shows that two out of the three main hypotheses have important explanatory powers, so it can be said that, from the institutional point of view, systems that are more exclusive can be associated with unfair oppositions. This fact has important implications in terms of institutional design and democratic regime.

opposition; political institutions; democracy; political parties; Latin America