Between Conflict and Cohesion. Ethic Consensus of the Postauthoritarian Party Coalitions in Chile

Abstract

This article proposes an alternative and complementary explanation to the cohesion of the postauthoritarian party coalitions in Chile. These coalitions keep a fundamental cohesion despite to coexist with internal division from the rise of political parties. In this sense, the ethic basis of this cohesion complements a plausible explanation of the survival coalitions. Moreover, the ethic like explicative variable improves those explanations of the incumbency struggles as univocal explicative factor of the party coalitions.

Thus, this paper has five sections. On the first and second sections, it exposes the essential premises of the dialectic tension between conflict and cohesion, in other words, the rise of political parties and its subsequent regrouping into coalitions. On the third and fourth section, it describes both processes for the Chilean political parties, especially in the case of the ethic minimum consensus of Concertacion de Partidos por la Democracia. Finally, this work presents a group of descriptive premises about opponent coalition, currently named Coalicion por el Cambio.