Writing a constitution without parties? The programmatic weakness of party-voter linkages in the Chilean political change
| Published date | 01 February 2025 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231158073 |
| Author | Fabián Belmar,Mauricio Morales,Benjamín Villarroel |
| Date | 01 February 2025 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231158073
Politics
2025, Vol. 45(1) 69 –89
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957231158073
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Writing a constitution
without parties? The
programmatic weakness of
party-voter linkages in the
Chilean political change
Fabián Belmar
Universidad de Talca, Chile; Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Chile
Mauricio Morales
Benjamín Villarroel
Universidad de Talca, Chile
Abstract
In 2020 Chile began a constitution-making process that will culminate in writing a new
constitution through a 155-member constitutional convention. The Chilean party system is often
described as one of the most institutionalised in Latin America, so the election results of the
convention’s members were even more surprising. Of the 155 people elected, only 50 (32.2%)
are party members, 41 (26.4%) are independents adopted as candidates by a party, 48 (30.9%)
are independents outside a party, and 17 (10.9%) are representatives of indigenous peoples, all
of them independents. Compared to proximate legislative elections, the number of independent
candidates (ICs) and winners was substantially higher. We suggest that this increase was not only
due to a political climate of growing distrust of parties but also to an electoral law that allowed
ICs to form electoral apparentments with one another, thus combining their votes and increasing
their chances of success, especially in low-income municipalities of the capital.
Keywords
Chile, constitution, electoral systems, independent candidates, political parties
Received: 14th June 2022; Revised version received: 6th January 2023; Accepted: 9th January 2023
Introduction
On 15 November 2019, Chilean political parties met to provide an institutional solution
to one of the biggest social crises the country has ever faced: the social outbreak of 18-O.1
Corresponding author:
Mauricio Morales, Universidad de Talca, Campus Santiago. Santa Elena #2222, San Joaquín, Chile.
Email: mmoralesq@utalca.cl
1158073POL0010.1177/02633957231158073PoliticsBelmar et al.
research-article2023
Article
70 Politics 45(1)
In this instance, representatives of ruling and opposition parties met to draw a proposal to
review the current institutional framework and propose a constituent process that would
lay the foundations for a ‘new Chile’. Among the details of this process were the rules of
a new ad hoc electoral system that would operate in an unprecedented way for the elec-
tion of the representatives of the constitutional convention. One of these rules caused
particular interest among electoral experts and the public: the lists of independents. The
argument behind the opening to independents was to democratise the spaces of political
representation for the citizens. In other words, Chile’s institutionalised party system
opened the door for independent candidates (ICs) to compete on equal terms with party
candidates. The result of this experiment -unprecedented in the world- was successful, as
the representation of independents went from only 1 out of 155 (0.6%) in the congress
elected in 2017 to 48 out of 138 (34.8%) in the new convention, relegating the traditional
Chilean parties from the constitutional discussion.
In this research note, we analyse how Chile, one of the countries with the most institu-
tionalised party systems in the region (Mainwaring and Scully, 1995; Mainwaring and
Torcal, 2005), was able to increase so steeply the number of independent non-party rep-
resentatives from one election to the next. We argue that while this electoral process
illustrates the weakening of the traditional party system, it had one exceptional character-
istic: the electoral rules specifically implemented for these elections. Congress passed a
law allowing ICs to compete on lists within the framework of a proportional representa-
tion electoral system in which between three and eight candidates for the convention were
chosen in 28 districts. In other words, the law allowed the votes of ICs to be added to
those of other candidates adhering to a common apparentment. In contrast, for the elec-
tion of members of Congress, each IC competing with outside parties or party coalitions
had to do so as an individual candidacy. This had a significant effect on the final composi-
tion of the constitutional convention. The traditional political parties saw their representa-
tion drop significantly, while the ICs scored surprising victories. Whereas in the most
recent election of deputies in 2021, independents outside party coalitions obtained only
one of the 155 seats, in the election of the convention, they won 48, more than 30% of the
representation. Additionally, the law included seats reserved for indigenous peoples, for
which candidates had to be individuals without explicit and formal political party support.
In total, 17 seats were reserved for native peoples (11% of the total).
What effect did these electoral rules have on the political result? What socioeconomic
and sociodemographic factors explained the remarkable surge of independents? Was
there any territorial pattern in the independents’ success if urban areas were compared to
rural ones? To what extent was the percentage of votes for independents related to the
historical electoral strength of the traditional left, centre, or right parties? We answer
these questions with a statistical analysis of the election results at the municipal and can-
didate levels. Chile is made up of 345 municipalities, which are the smallest electoral unit
for which socioeconomic and sociodemographic data are available. We complement this
analysis with individual information on the 1278 candidates who competed for 138 seats
in the 28 electoral districts, excluding the 95 candidates from indigenous peoples (all of
whom were independents) because they were chosen using a different (majority) electoral
system. Finally, to identify differences in the 2021 convention election, we compared its
results with those of the 2017 and 2021 congressional elections since they are the most
similar in composition.
The article is divided into five sections. First, we discuss the literature that studies the
access and performance of ICs, and then we focus on the evidence of the elections of
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