Policy Brief
Deepening Democracy by Renovating Political Practices: The Struggle for Electoral Reform in Colombia
by Professor Matthew Søberg Shugart, Erika Moreno, and Luis E. Fajardo
Brief prepared by Joyce Lawrence, MPIA 2008
Click here to access this in PDF form.
Colombia has been experiencing an ongoing political crisis with guerilla groups controlling large parts of the country and drug traffickers influencing the government. However, it is also a functioning democracy, which underwent significant electoral reform in 2003. In Deepening Democracy by Renovating Political Practices: The Struggle for Electoral Reform in Colombia, authors Matthew Søberg Shugart, Erika Moreno, and Luis E. Fajardo demonstrate the weaknesses of Colombia’s previous electoral system and describe the difficult process of achieving electoral reform.
Before 2003, representatives were elected to both the house and the senate from party lists in districts with multiple seats (the district for the senate is the whole country and has 100 seats). The election winners were determined first by the top candidate on each list that had reached a quota of votes, and the remaining seats were given out to the highest vote-getting lists after subtracting the votes used for quota seats. Parties could run as many lists as they chose in each district, and each list stood alone since none of the votes for that list would carry over to any others. This electoral system created incentives for candidates from the same party to compete with each other and led to weak, disorganized parties. Since each party had multiple lists, campaigning based on the party name was relatively ineffective, and politicians instead focused on delivering localized benefits (“pork”) to their constituents. This type of “personalism,” where the candidate matters more than the party makes it unlikely that parties will offer broad platforms that address the concerns of groups of voters.
While many recognized the inherent flaws in Colombia’s electoral system, the conditions had to be right for the politicians who benefited from “personalism” to be willing to vote for reform. Once public opinion was strong enough in favor of reform, representatives would either vote for it or risk losing their office in the next election. The election of President Uribe in 2002 as an independent (after defecting from the Liberal party) was a major turning point, as Uribe used his popularity as an independent to push for reform. Under the threat of a public referendum, congress was willing to negotiate.
The majority of politicians agreed on changing to a proportional representation system, in which each party would offer one list of candidates and the votes for any of the candidates would be counted toward the share of seats for that party. The authors suggest that this reform “greatly enhances the ability of parties to act collectively” since votes for any individual count towards the overall share for the party. It is too early to see how this change will influence policy on the on-going problems of drug trafficking and guerilla warfare that have plagued the Colombian government. However, the new electoral system is much more likely to advance broad policy initiatives than the previous one.
Brief prepared by Joyce Lawrence, MPIA 2008
Click here to access this in PDF form.
Colombia has been experiencing an ongoing political crisis with guerilla groups controlling large parts of the country and drug traffickers influencing the government. However, it is also a functioning democracy, which underwent significant electoral reform in 2003. In Deepening Democracy by Renovating Political Practices: The Struggle for Electoral Reform in Colombia, authors Matthew Søberg Shugart, Erika Moreno, and Luis E. Fajardo demonstrate the weaknesses of Colombia’s previous electoral system and describe the difficult process of achieving electoral reform.
Before 2003, representatives were elected to both the house and the senate from party lists in districts with multiple seats (the district for the senate is the whole country and has 100 seats). The election winners were determined first by the top candidate on each list that had reached a quota of votes, and the remaining seats were given out to the highest vote-getting lists after subtracting the votes used for quota seats. Parties could run as many lists as they chose in each district, and each list stood alone since none of the votes for that list would carry over to any others. This electoral system created incentives for candidates from the same party to compete with each other and led to weak, disorganized parties. Since each party had multiple lists, campaigning based on the party name was relatively ineffective, and politicians instead focused on delivering localized benefits (“pork”) to their constituents. This type of “personalism,” where the candidate matters more than the party makes it unlikely that parties will offer broad platforms that address the concerns of groups of voters.
While many recognized the inherent flaws in Colombia’s electoral system, the conditions had to be right for the politicians who benefited from “personalism” to be willing to vote for reform. Once public opinion was strong enough in favor of reform, representatives would either vote for it or risk losing their office in the next election. The election of President Uribe in 2002 as an independent (after defecting from the Liberal party) was a major turning point, as Uribe used his popularity as an independent to push for reform. Under the threat of a public referendum, congress was willing to negotiate.
The majority of politicians agreed on changing to a proportional representation system, in which each party would offer one list of candidates and the votes for any of the candidates would be counted toward the share of seats for that party. The authors suggest that this reform “greatly enhances the ability of parties to act collectively” since votes for any individual count towards the overall share for the party. It is too early to see how this change will influence policy on the on-going problems of drug trafficking and guerilla warfare that have plagued the Colombian government. However, the new electoral system is much more likely to advance broad policy initiatives than the previous one.
