Chile’s electoral system can only be
understood in the context of the long period of authoritarian rule under
General Augusto Pinochet (1973–90), whose aim was to establish a regime of
protected, authoritarian democracy, of which the electoral system was one
component. The dictatorship abolished PR, which had been in force prior to the
military coup of 11 September 1973. PR was the response to the cleavages in Chile’s
social structure since the 19th century and had produced a multiparty system.
By the 1960s this had consolidated into six major parties—two on the left (the
Socialists and the Communists), two in the centre (the Christian Democrats and
the Radicals), and two on the right (the Liberals and the Conservatives, who
merged in 1966 to form the National Party).
The
Binomial System: a Legacy of Authoritarianism
In Chile’s
bicameral constitutional arrangements, the Chamber of Deputies, the lower
house, consists of 120 members elected for a four-year term, two for each of
the 60 electoral districts. The Senate has 38 elected members, two for each of
the 19 districts, elected for an eight-year term: there are elections for half
of the seats every four years, simultaneously with elections to the Chamber of
Deputies. There are in addition nine non-elected members, the ‘institutional’
or ‘designated’ senators, named by the National Security Council (four), the
Supreme Court (three) and the president (two), and one ex-officio life member,
former President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle. (The original 13 senatorial districts
of the 1980 constitution were expanded to 19 in the 1989 constitutional reforms
to reduce the power of the non-elected senators.) These arrangements were
negotiated by Pinochet and his supporters as they fell from power during the
transition to democracy.
Parties,
coalitions or independents present lists, normally containing a maximum of two
candidates per district, in elections both for the Chamber of Deputies and for
the Senate. Voters vote for the candidate of their choice. The first seat goes
to whichever list receives the most votes in total: the representative elected
is the individual candidate on that list who receives the highest vote. To take
both seats, the most successful list must receive twice the number of votes of
the second list. This system forces the parties to form electoral coalitions
because the effective threshold is very high: 33.4 per cent of the total vote
for the top list is required to win one seat. However, a list needs to receive
66.7 per cent of the total vote to be guaranteed both seats.
There are
two major electoral coalitions, which in 2001 won all the seats in the Chamber
of Deputies except one. The centre–left Concertación por la Democracia is
formed by four parties opposed to the Pinochet regime (the Socialists, the
Democracy Party, the Christian Democrats and the Radicals) and ruled from the
return to democracy in March 1990 up until March 2010. The right-wing
opposition Alliance for Chile (the Independent Democrat
Union, UDI, and National Renewal, RN) supported the Pinochet regime. In
practice the Concertación list contains one candidate from each of two
groupings within the coalition, that is, one from the Christian Democrats and
another from the Socialists, the Democracy Party and the Radicals. There is no
district in which there is competition between the Socialists and the Democracy
Party. On the opposition list, the UDI and National Renewal normally present
one candidate each in all districts.
The result
of this electoral system is that almost all districts return one representative
from the Concertación and one from the Alliance
for Chile.
The system could create competition between the two candidates on a list for
the one seat it will win, but in practice even this is severely limited by
elite accommodation within both coalitions.
This
electoral system is unique because in practice it favours the largest minority,
not the majority. It is thus not a majoritarian system. It is a system which
uses a proportional mechanism, but the results it produces are not
proportional, since it allows an electoral list to take half the seats with
only 34 per cent of the votes. The only reason why this distortion has not
occurred in practice is the limits to electoral competition.
The
electoral system was set up by the military regime following the plebiscite of
5 October 1988. The plebiscite had two goals: to approve the 1980 constitution
and to elect General Pinochet as president for a further eight years. In this non-competitive
election (there was no other candidate), Pinochet was defeated by the
Concertación. This triggered the transition to democracy, with congressional
and presidential elections in 1989, the presidential election being won by the
opposition candidate Patricio Aylwin (Christian Democrat). The electoral system
was designed to favour the two right-wing parties, which had backed Pinochet’s
candidacy, in the face of a predictable electoral victory for their opponents.
In the
three presidential and four congressional elections held between 1990 and 2000,
the Concertación has received most votes, but has never controlled the Senate
because the majority of the institutional senators have supported the
opposition.
The
Drawbacks of the Binomial System for the Parties and for Democracy
Several
objections to the electoral system have been voiced. First, it forces the
parties into electoral coalitions because of the high vote threshold required
to win a seat. Second, it has a negative impact on representation because it
has kept the Communist Party out of Congress, despite its relevance up to 1973
and its 5–7 per cent share of the national vote in the new democracy. Third,
since each coalition will normally win one seat, the real contest takes place
among the member parties, rather than between rival alliances and parties.
These disputes endanger stability in the coalitions; in the 2001 senatorial
elections the UDI and the RN avoided them and named a single consensus
candidate in seven of the nine districts, or ran only a weak competitor who
would not challenge the leadership’s candidate. Fourth, the system hands
enormous power to the party leaders, who virtually choose the winners when they
make up the lists. With no real competition in many districts, the elections
hold little interest for the voters, and even less so when there is no
candidate of their own party to vote for.
The
deficiencies have led the government to propose that there should be electoral
reforms and to suggest that, instead of the two-member districts, larger
districts that would yield more proportional results would be more appropriate.
This has made little headway, however, because the Concertación parties fear
the resulting uncertainty, and the opposition defends the current system
because of the advantage it gives them.
Presidential
Elections
The 1980
constitution establishes a two-round system for presidential elections. An
absolute majority is required for victory in the first round, with a run-off
round (ballotage) if this does not occur. The institution of ballotage tends to
strengthen coalition politics. The winners of the presidential elections in
1989 and 1993—Christian Democrats Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei,
respectively—were elected with absolute majorities, but in 1999 there was only
a scant 30,000-vote difference between Ricardo Lagos and his right-wing
opponent, Joaquín Lavín. Lagos
won with 50.27 per cent of the vote in the second round. (Under the previous
(1925) constitution, when no candidate won an absolute majority, Congress
decided the presidency, as occurred in 1946, 1958 and 1970. In each case it
elected the candidate with the highest vote.)
Registration
and Voting: Voluntary or Compulsory?
A further
problem perceived in the current electoral system is that registration is
voluntary but voting is compulsory. New electoral registers were opened in
February 1987, when the military regime was preparing the October 1988
plebiscite, the old registers having been burned by the military in 1973. The
democratic opposition mobilized strongly to get voters registered; its strategy
was to defeat Pinochet at the polls in order to achieve democracy, and it
succeeded in getting 92 per cent of eligible voters to register. Since then,
however, the number of registered voters has not increased in line with the
voting age population, as young people now show little interest in
participating in elections. In the 2001 congressional elections 80 per cent of
10 million potential voters were registered; in the 2004 municipal elections
the figure was 77 per cent.
Low
registration among young voters led the government to propose automatic
registration and voluntary voting. The Concertación parties support automatic
registration, but there is no consensus on voluntary voting. They fear that
overall participation will fall and that the financial costs of campaigning to
mobilize voters will rise and rise, thus favouring the right-wing parties. The
opposition, particularly the UDI, rejects automatic registration and supports
voluntary voting.
Supporters
of the binomial system claim that it has helped governability because there are
two big coalitions, one in government and one in opposition. However, this view
is mistaken: the Concertación as a coalition was created before the binomial
system was introduced, as an alliance to work against authoritarian rule and
promote a return to democracy by politicians who had learned from their past
conflicts (which led to the crisis and breakdown of democracy in 1973) and had
agreed on a strategy of elite cooperation within a political system somewhat
comparable to a consociational democracy. The country is governable despite the
binomial system, not because of it.
The system
cannot last indefinitely because it damages the political parties and poses
limitations to democracy, but it will be difficult to abolish because change
would create uncertainty about the impact on party support. It would also
require a constitutional amendment, because the binomial character of the
Senate is in the constitution. There is consensus in Congress between the
Concertación and the Alliance for Chile
on eliminating the non-elected senators and former presidents as life members.
