La evolución de los regímenes políticos y el sistema electoral en Latinoamérica, 1903-2004

Abstract

Can electoral systems support or hinder the consolidation of democracy? We argue that political élites have selected electoral systems that maximized their chances to survive in office. Therefore, authoritarian incumbents have preferred majoritarian systems that minimize the costs of suppressing the opposition, while democratic incumbents have tended to select proportional systems that minimize the costs of toleration. Because of this reason, the choice of electoral systems and the level of democracy have reinforced each other. We test this argument using a new dataset for Latin America and the United States between 1903 and 2004.