Descripción de cada uno de los momentos de la metodología

The previous section highlighted that the reform and further amendments on constitutions had explanatory power, as independent variable, to test the process of democratic divergence for Colombia and Venezuela over the ‘divergence period’. It argued that the role played by a renewed set of political elites –either appointed in the Constitutional Assembly for the Venezuelan case, or elected in the National Assembly in the Colombian case- was crucial to determine the democratic path taken by the countries under study. Moreover, it also showed that political elites made reforms or amendments on their constitutions in order to grant different levels of concentration of power for their executive branches that partially explain the different democratic

trajectories for the countries under study.209

However, although comprehensive reforms or amendments on constitutions can be regarded as an important step to explain democratic divergence, its explanatory power over the dependent variable would be partial if reforms over the electoral system are not taken into consideration. Therefore, this section will claim that the main goal from the renewed political elites in reforming their constitutions, during the ‘divergence

period’, was to have a direct influence on the way by which the appointment of public

elected officials can be changed by controlling the electoral formula. Thus, in this subsection I propose that a central factor in the adoption of different electoral systems over time for the countries under study can be explained by the incentives that politicians have in order to guarantee different levels of concentration of power on both the executive and legislative branches of government through constitutional means. That is, if constitution makers have the possibility to alter the formulas for electing presidents and legislators; electoral cycles; term limits; presidential powers; and the relationship between national and local governments, then, they have an

209 _{Section 6.4.1 showed that Venezuela’s executive received the support of a pro-government majority}

in the decision-making bodies so that, by constitutional means, the president could accumulate as much power as possible; whereas for the Colombian case such accumulation was rather control by the judicial branch and in some extent by the legislative branch of government. This is because, both the Constituent Assembly and the legislative body was composed of political forces from different ideologies that managed to distribute power in different degree among the different branches of government.

important political asset to determine how power can be redistributed in a regime. Hence, they will have an important role in determining the democratic path a country might take. In this respect, electoral systems will be considered as the third independent variable that, along with the variables elite political culture and

constitutions make up the whole Circular Causality Model introduced in chapter three.

To a large extent, tables 6.2 and 6.3 already showed and analysed the effects caused by the electoral reforms conducted for the two countries under study, and for both periods of analysis. From that analysis, it was claimed that over the ‘transitional period’ the electoral reforms in both countries were rather rare due to traditional

political elites tried to maintain the political status quo by backing traditional parties

(COPEI and AD in Venezuela; and Liberal and Conservative parties in Colombia) that used to rule these polities (Bejarano 2011; Buxton 2005). Such stability in the electoral rules can be translated in the steadiness on the democratic performance that Colombia and Venezuela enjoyed over that period allowing them to be considered as one of the most stable democracies in the region (see table 2.2 and figures 1.1 - 1.2).

Yet, it was also clear from the previous analysis that, despite the democratic stability enjoyed by both polities during the ‘transitional period’, the Venezuelan electoral system was more democratic as its electoral rule to distribute seats in the Senate (the upper house in Congress) was a closed-list pure PR system with the D’Hondt electoral formula method; whereas for the Colombian case a semi-PR system with the formula of larger remainders (LR) or Hare system was the electoral rule to allocate seats in the Senate (Wills-Otero, et. al., 2005). Thus, the latter formula, in comparative terms with the Venezuelan one, resulted less proportional and, therefore, more exclusionary as it

tried to guarantee the continuation in power for Colombia’s traditional parties.210

Nonetheless, after decades without significant modifications, electoral rules did change during the ‘divergence period.’ In fact, since President Chávez took power in

210 _{To be sure about the direct influence that the electoral system has over the democratic performance,}

Freedom House ratings (see table 2.2) showed that over the whole ‘transitional period’ the Venezuelan democratic performance was always above (lower), and therefore better, than that of Colombia. That is, during that period Venezuela was regarded as a ‘free country’ whereas Colombia always remained below as a ‘partly free’ country.

1998, one of his first goals in government was to appoint a Constituent Assembly211

whose principal role was to enact a completely new set of rules that will allow him to rule the country. Thus, among the whole new set of rules contemplated in the new

1999 ‘Bolivarian Constitution’, the electoral ones to elect public officials was one on

the main focus of this comprehensive reform. As a result, over the ‘divergence period’ the electoral rules changed three times (1998, 2000, and 2005). These reforms considerably modified the incentives that ruling and opposition political parties had to participate in equal conditions for accessing power positions. Overall, the electoral formula changed from the closed-list pure PR system to a mixed system, with most of the National Assembly members elected by plurality. Thus, the new Venezuelan electoral formula weakened the ‘incentives for party discipline and the power of the

traditional national party leaders [as used to be the case over the ‘transitional period]’

(Monaldi, et. al., 2008) thereby, favouring the parties allied to the government.212

As for Colombia, its electoral formula also changed over the ‘divergence period’. However, it did not change straightaway with the enactment of the comprehensive constitutional reform carried out in 1991. In fact, the largest remainders-Hare system

remained in place when the 1991 new constitution was enacted.213 By keeping

untouched the electoral formula party unity was undermined contributing to governance problems such as successive political stalemates in the legislature. In this sense, the Hare system did not allow competition among parties, but rather it generated

incentives for traditional parties to fragment into several factions. 214

211 _{Premonitory to what is going to happen with the future electoral reforms in Venezuela, the 1998}

Constituent Assembly was appointed by a Majoritarian system, leaving completely abandoned for first time in the twentieth century the use of the proportional formula (Monaldi, et. al. 2008).

212 _{To be clear, the effect of changing the electoral formula in 1999 over the Venezuelan democratic}

performance is negative. Figure 1.1 showed that, according to Freedom House ranking, this country had a sharp fall moving from a ‘free country’ with a score of 2,5 in 1999 to a ‘partly free country’ with a score of 4 one year later (see also table 2.2).The one-year lag to observe the change in the evaluation of the democratic rating for this regime is explained because the electoral reform approved in 1998 came into practice in the 1999 National Assembly election, therefore, Freedom House complies this result only up to its 2000 report. The data supporting this argument comes from the report Freedom in the World 2015, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.VXm- p2BGjdm).

213 _{In fact, this formula completed a total period of 45 years without modifications since the last time it}

was amended in 1958 (Wills-Otero, 2009).

214 _{For example, the excessive party fragmentation produced that in the 2002 election only three lists,}

out of more than 300 succeeded in electing more than one senator. This means that more than 72 different movementsobtained at least one seat in the Senate (Cardenas, et. al., 2008). These movements were typically affiliated to the two major Colombian political parties: Liberal and Conservative.

Such party fragmentation and its extreme personalisation of electoral competition in Congress (Pizarro 2006; Shugart et. al. 2007) urged a political reform that could both unlock the legislative stalemate and, therefore, allow a more responsive system of governance. Thus, in June 2003, after repeated failures, the Colombian congress approved an electoral reform. It moved the electoral formula from the Hare quota

system with no limit on the number of lists per party215 to a pure PR system with an

optional open/closed list (Wills-Otero, 2009; Pachón-Buitrago 2008). This electoral reform was an important step in improving the democratic performance of Colombia because in addition to enhance the ability of parties to act collectively, it also allowed a broader competition among parties from different ideologies that used to be excluded from the political contest. Furthermore, this reform introduced for first time in history, a 2% electoral threshold that helped to limit the number of parties with legislative representation.216

Like with the Venezuelan case, the effect of changing the electoral formula over the Colombian democratic performance can be observed by looking at the Freedom House scores assigned to this country. As seen in figure 1.1, Colombia before the 2003 electoral reform was regarded as a ‘partly free country’ with a score of 4 in 2002 by Freedom House, but its democratic performance changed positively once the 2003 electoral reform became operational in the legislative elections held in 2006 scoring 3

in 2007 (see also table 2.2).217

The key point to highlight from the previous comparative analysis is that the electoral reforms implemented by the countries under study over the ‘divergence period’ can be

215 _{The Colombian electoral system up through 2002 ‘was an unusual system in which most political}

parties presented multiple lists of candidates, but there was no pooling of the votes won by any of a party’s various lists’ (Shugart, et. al., 2007: 203).

216 _{As a matter of fact, the parties winning legislative representation were indeed political parties with}

autonomous representation in the legislature away from the traditional parties or its factions. This outcome represents the positive effects exerted by the implementation of a pure PR system in Colombia, which, in turn, caused an increased in political representation for parties that used to be excluded during the ‘transitional period’ As a result, only 14 political parties won representation in the congress elected in 2006, 58 parties less than in the 2002 legislative elections (Cardenas, et. al., 2008).

217 _{It is worth mentioning here that even though Colombian democratic rating did not change over the}

‘divergence period’ and remained as a ‘partly free’ country, its democratic scores along that period did move favourably from 4 in 2003 to 3 in 2007. Again, the three-year lag to observe the effects that changes in the electoral system have over democracy is explained by the period of time required for the reform to start operating. For the Colombian case, the electoral reform was enacted in 2003 but the next legislative elections were carried out just until 2006, therefore, Freedom House could only report this effect in its 2007 report. The data supporting this argument comes from the report Freedom in the World 2015, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world/freedom-world-2015#.VXm-p2BGjdm).

regarded as a critical juncture that can explain the divergent democratic paths taken for the cases under study. That is, while some scholars consider electoral systems as only one more criterion affecting the political process (e.g. Lijphart 1977, 1999; Inglehart 2005), this research claim that this criterion should be regarded, in its own right, as the most important factor to explain democratic divergence because it determines how the balance of legislative power is distributed among different

political parties. As seen, duringthe‘divergence period’ when Venezuela changed its

electoral formula in 1998 from a pure PR system –that used to encourage political party competition- to a more restrictive one such as the mixed electoral system in which its plurality component became its major key feature benefiting pro-government

parties to get elected at the expense of opposition parties,218 its democratic

performance changed negatively towards a lees democratic regime. That is, the introduction of the mixed PR system over the ‘divergence period’ encouraged power concentration in hands of the president’s allies and, therefore, marked the beginning of the Venezuelan democratic regression.

Likewise, when Colombian political elites decided to change the electoral formula during the ‘divergence period’ in 2003 -12 years after the 1991 new constitution came into force-, its outcome over the democratic performance of this country also changed. However, its democratic change, unlike Venezuela, was a positive one. That is, when the 2003 political reform changed the electoral formula from a Hare quota system – that used to restrict political party competition only to the traditional Liberal and Conservative Parties and its factions- to a more plural and competitive system such as the PR system with the D’Hondt electoral formula method, its democratic performance improved as can be seen in figures 1.1 and 1.2. Hence, this electoral reform, whose purpose was to extend competition between a new set of political parties with real chances of having congressional representation, encouraged power distribution that contributed to the integration of those political forces that once were excluded from competition. In this sense, then, the 2003 electoral reform can be recognised as a

218 _{It is striking to note that the rate of officials elected by the plurality component from the Mixed}

System increased every time an electoral reform occurred. This was a mechanism carefully designed to favour the ruling party, at the expense of the opposition parties. For instance, the 1998 reform allowed for the election of the 50 percent of the deputies in multimember plurality districts; with the 2000 reform it was allowed that 65 percent of deputies were elected by the plurality component; and finally, when the 2005 mixed electoral system was implemented without global proportionality, dramatically increasing its disproportionality (Monaldi, et. al., 2008).

fundamental tool helping to improve Colombia’s democratic performance over the ‘divergence period.’

In sum, this section showed that reforms over the electoral system have explanatory power over the dependent variable. This causal relationship is explained by the strategic intervention of political elites, such as constitutional makers, which can affect the electoral system and, therefore, the democratic performance of the countries under study. In other words, the point to stress here is that political elites should be regarded as intervening actors with political power that make possible changes in the electoral formulas. These changes, in turn, could explain the different paths taken by Colombia and Venezuela. Boix (1999) and Wills-Otero (2009) develops a similar argument claiming that for unconsolidated democracies political elites shape electoral systems according to their interests so that they can maximise the representation of political leaders, and influence the regime’s democratic path. The same argument applies for the cases under study. Venezuelan elites by changing the electoral rules, through constitutional means, managed to change electoral preferences of the voters and by doing so they guaranteed Chávez’s continuation in power over the whole ‘divergence period’, resulting in its consequent democratic setback. In contrast, Colombian elites by introducing the D’Hondt electoral formula managed to tackle the problem of concentration of power enabling an open competition from different political forces allowing more equity in the distribution of power, contributing to improve its democratic performance.

6.5. Conclusion

The aim of this chapter was to assess, from a conceptual approach, the explanatory power of the second set of independent variables: constitutions and electoral systems to explain democratic divergence. The chapter began by acknowledging the outstanding contribution Arend Lijphart (1977; 1999; 2012) made to institutional theory by distinguishing different patterns of democracy. I argued that, although Lijphart’s contribution can be regarded as an effective theoretical framework to classify political regimes as either Consensual or Majoritarian democracies, it fails to do so when trying to explain patterns of democracy for less developed countries. The central argument to claim Lijphart’s theory is unsuitable for this research was based on the criticism made by Schmidt (2000), and Cranenburg, et. al. (2004), among

others. They argued that the institutional criteria chosen by Lijphart is biased in favour of his definition of consensual democracies, and that the relative weight of these criteria should not necessarily be the same to evaluate processes of regime change in non-stable democracies.

Hence, this chapter argues that in order to have a better understanding of the opposite democratic paths taken by the countries under study, Lijphart´s typology needs to be re-constructed to increase its explanatory power. This shall be done by giving a higher relative weight to a subset of Lijphart’s institutional criteria, those that have played a significant role in the process of regime change. By identifying a critical juncture shared by Colombia and Venezuela at the end of the ‘transitional period’, one in which both regimes were facing political, social and economic turmoil, this chapter argued that these polities, particularly its political elites, had to make contingent choices related with a comprehensive institutional reengineering if they were to solve their crises. The far-reaching institutional choices were similar in both countries as they decided to conduct a comprehensive constitutional reform in order to create favourable conditions to avoid the collapse of their democracies. Additionally, these countries also placed particular emphasis in reforming their electoral systems. By controlling the electoral formula political elites could redistribute power among several political forces that will help explain, either the regression or the consolidation of their democratic paths.

Thus, it was argued that the selection of the subset of institutional criteria chosen in this research was by no means arbitrary, because the reforms conducted on both constitutions –and its consequences on the accumulation of power by the executive branch-, and their electoral systems can be regarded as the key political institutions over which political elites exerted a profound reform that brought changes in the democratic performance of these two countries.

The comparative analysis conducted in sub-sections 6.4.1 and 6.4.2 over constitutions and electoral systems, respectively, argued that these criteria have explanatory power to explain the dependent variable. As for the former, the analysis carried out over the impact that power distribution, electoral systems, and policy making reforms had over regime change in both countries, and in both periods of analysis –Transitional vs. Divergence- were conclusive. For the Venezuelan case, it was clear that when the

effects of these three types of reforms were compared, over time and against the performance of this democracy, the enacted reforms and constitutional amendments

enshrined in the 1999 ‘Bolivarian Constitution’ led the presidency into being the

centre of gravity, favouring concentration of power in hands of President Chávez and its allies. Additionally, it also limited political rights and civil liberties of those that were part of the opposition. In other words, the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 and the adoption –via referendum- of the new constitution in 1999 signed off the start of