El sistema empresarial cubano Características

To explain the operationalisation and measurement of the variable electoral system it is important to emphasise that the purpose of suggesting this variable is to capture the way by which different electoral formulas affect the power distribution on a given regimen. Wills-Otero (2009), side with this argument and explain that in Latin America, proportional forms of representation replaced the majoritarian electoral system when governments realised that the latter posed a threat to concentrate power

in a dominant party.235 Hence, to capture the effect that changes in the electoral

formulas have over power distribution when the electoral reforms are implemented, I adopted an economic measurement of market concentration. By using the Herfindahl

Hirschman Index of plurality (HHI),I could capture the concentration of power within

the legislature. The adoption of this index in political science is meant to measure how power is concentrated in a party or political group (Larcinese, 2011). Put differently, it accounts for the way by which the institutional framework of any electoral system can affect power distribution and democracy. The way to interpret the index is as follows: the closer to 1, the electoral formula leads to a relatively more plural electoral

235 _{As explained in chapter 6, Venezuela and Colombia were not the exception to this regional trend and}

during the ‘divergence period’ they decided to reform their electoral systems to have more representatives and become more inclusive. However, the outcome of these electoral reforms could not be more contradictory. While Colombia changed its electoral formula in 2003 from a semi-proportional Hare quota system to a more proportional D’Hondt system to redistribute power among a greater number of parties (see table 6.1), Venezuela did the opposite. In 1999, the country changed its traditional D’Hondt system by a Hare quota system in which the concentration of power fell primarily over the executive branch rather than distributing it among a larger number of political parties (see table 6.2).

system, therefore, power will be concentrated in few political parties. Conversely, if the index is closer to 0, the electoral formula leads to a relatively more proportional electoral system and power will be distributed more evenly among a more number of parties.

As mentioned above, the index will be labelled as HHI, and will be calculated with the

following formula:

∑𝑖𝑖=1𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑖2 (7.1)

Where 𝑠𝑠_𝑖𝑖 stands for the seats shared by a party from the total seats available in the

legislature. Hence, the formula is the sum of squares of the share of seats held by a political party from the total number of seats available in the legislature.

To calculate this index, data was collected236 for every parliamentary election that was

usually held every four years in both countries.237 Additionally, to operationalise this

index as a continuous variable238 it is important to point out that the seats in parliament

are held until new elections are called. Therefore, the value of the index will be the same throughout the entire parliamentarian period.

Figure 7.4 depicts the degree of concentration of power in the legislature measured by

HHI index. This figure shows that both Colombia and Venezuela had a relatively high

concentration of power during the ‘transitional period’ as these polities fell in a range between 0.4 and 0.5 in the index, following a similar path and confirming the findings

offered in chapter 6. However, these similar co-movements in HHI for both countries

began to change during the ‘divergence period’ as both countries took completely different routes in terms of how power was distributed among political parties in their parliaments. From the enactment of the 1991 constitution figure 7.4 also shows that

Colombian HHI index, began to fall. It passed from a score of 0.45 in 1990 to 0.3 in

2002, which in turn, implied an improvement in the distribution of power. However,

236_{To build the HHI variable, it was necessary first to build a database on parliamentary votes, parties}

and seats based on the following sources: Political Database of the America from Georgetown University (www.pdba.georgetown.edu), Observatorio Electoral (www.electoral.org), the National Civil Registry (Registraduría Nacional del Estado Civil), and National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral).

237 _{There are atypical cases. For example, for the Colombian case there were elections in 1990 and 1991}

and for Venezuela there were elections on 1998, 2000, 2005 and 2010.

238 _{This index has an annualised periodicity to be consistent with the time scale of all variables included}

it was not until the electoral reform that came into force in 2003 that the Colombian HHI index reached its sharpest fall from 0.3 to 0.15 showing that the shift to the D’Hondt system brought an effect over a more equitable distribution of power.

Figure 14.4.

HHI

Source: own estimations based on National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral), Electoral Council (Observatorio Electoral) and Political Database of the Americas from Georgetown University

The electoral reform conducted by Venezuela had completely different outcomes when compared with the Colombian case. Figure 7.4 clearly shows the impact that the enactment of the 1999 Venezuelan constitution -which included the electoral reform- had over the participation of different political forces in parliament. Despite Venezuela finished the ‘transitional period’ with an encouraging HHI index of 0.15 in 1998 its index of concentration of power began to deteriorate as soon as the new constitution

and electoral reform came into force in 1999. In fact, by 2000 Venezuelas’ HHI index

scored a 0.25, which from there on become higher year after year reaching a worrisome score of 0.5 in 2010. This outcome reflects the findings discussed in chapter 6 in which the comprehensive reforms carried out by President Hugo Chávez and his allies had no other intention than to accumulate power at the expense of opposition parties.

The usefulness of the HHI index can also be studied by looking at the relation with

democratic performance measured by Freedom House Index. Figures 7.5 (a) and (b)

depicts such relationship and shows a rather counterintuitive relationship. That is,

focusing on the ‘transitional period’both countries scored good indexes of democratic

performance as they were regarded as ‘free’ for the Venezuelan case and ‘partly free’ for the Colombian case (see figure 7.1). However, their HHI index was relatively high

.1 .2 .3 .4 .5 H HI ind ex 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 year

over this period indicating a high concentration of power among a reduced number of political parties.

This finding can be explained by the way the democratic transition took place for these countries. As discussed in the first part of this project, the democratic transition was reached when the traditional political parties agreed the ‘Punto Fijo pact’ and the ‘National Front pact’ to put an end to the military rule that used to govern Venezuela and Colombia respectively. These pacts, as discussed in chapter 3, guaranteed alternation of power between two parties (COPEI and AD in Venezuela; and PL and PC in Colombia) and equal participation of all party members in the executive cabinet of the winning party (Buxton 2001, 2005). By the nature of these pacts it is expected, then, that a high concentration of power would be the outcome which explains the high value of the HHI index during this period. What is striking about this relation is that

despite the high value of the HHI index the democratic score obtained by these

countries were relatively good (at least ‘partly free’). This relationship is theoretically counterintuitive: a relatively more plural electoral system (high HHI) that concentrates power among few parties will worsen democracy in heterogeneous societies.

However, data shows that during the ´transitional period´, when two parties

concentrated power, the democracy index had a good performance in both countries. Figures 7.5 (a) and (b) also shows that the reforms conducted over the electoral

systems during the ´divergence period´ had also effects on the democratic performance

but in different degrees in both countries. When Colombia conducted its electoral reform in 2003 by changing its electoral formula from a Hare system to a D´Hondt system its impact over Freedom House Index was rather stable. In average, its democratic classification remained as a ‘partly free’ country, which fluctuated within a bounded interval and enabled it to maintain its previous democratic performance. For Venezuela, in turn, the change of its electoral system from a D´Hondt system to a less proportional one, such as the Hare System, had the theoretical expected effect over its democratic performance. As shown in figure 7.5 (b) the implementation of the Venezuelan electoral reform in 1999 had a negative impact over its democratic performance as it worsened its Freedom House score to the point that by 2010 this country obtained a worrisome score of 5 out of 7. This made it very close to classify the country as a ‘not free’ regime.

Figure 15.5.

Democracy and HHI

a) Colombia b) Venezuela

Source: Own estimations based on Freedom House, National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral), Electoral Council (Observatorio Electoral) and Political Database of the Americas from Georgetown University

Based on the three relations described above, it is possible to infer that the HHI index

is a good input to measure: the concentration of power between countries, because this index contains relevant characteristics derived from the electoral systems that can be regarded as an independent variable to explain democratic divergence.