Dimensions of Competition in Chilean Politics in the Nineties: Assessing the Impact of a Military Government in the Restructuring of the Party System

Abstract

This document studies the impact of the Chilean transition on the development of the party system, where the authoritarianism has had a high level of legitimacy. Based on multivariate analysis of the World Values Survey, it is explored what are the main dimensions of political and electoral competition in a democracy with a long tradition of political parties, where the support to authoritarian rule was added to the previous political tradition.

In a second step, it is discussed the relationship of these dimensions to partisan support, in order to ascertain which dimensions are politically significant in terms of being associated to voting intention. It is also important to take into account the people without partisan preferences, as there could be a potential for the growing of electoral parties. The main conclusion of this research is that the authoritarianism/democracy dimension has operated in a way which reinforces the ideological question (left-right), so that both have been enhanced, allowing the stability of electoral alignments.