Los sistemas de partidos de América Latina frente al espejoelementos de contexto para las próximas citas electorales en la región

Resumo

The electoral normality achieved in Latin America for more than four decades is based on elections that are regularly held across political systems of the region. Year 2021 will be marked by calls for simultaneous presidential and legislative elections in Ecuador, Peru, Chile, Honduras and Nicaragua; legislative and subnational elections in El Salvador, Argentina and Mexico; along with Chile, Bolivia and Honduras that will have subnational elections; as well as supranational elections for the Andean Parliament and for the Central American Parliament in several of these countries. This ordinary electoral sequence is joined by the convocation for a Constituent Assembly to be held in Chile during first semester of 2021. Elements related to the parties and party system dynamics that will influence incoming electoral events are the main focus of this paper. Among them, we found a crisis of confidence in the parties which has already a long history. Parties face this year’s elections suffering from low levels of party identification, together with low credibility in their politicians. Along with this matter, features related to party system competition will be analyzed, such as low political polarization despite social polarization, remarkable levels of volatility, and varied levels of fragmentation across party systems. All these dimensions shape Latin American parties’ strategies conditioning their electoral performance in a context of erosion of democracies.