Popular Representation and Party Systems: Products of Electoral Reform and Tools of Survival

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This research seeks to test a two-part hypothesis about the creation of electoral laws and their effects on a nation's political party system: electoral procedures that improve the level of representativeness of a party system will only be implemented only when doing so improves the political position of the politicians involved in making the laws. Using data on electoral reforms and the politicians who supported or opposed them, this study will discover whether politicians whose political survival is threatened will prefer rules that broaden participation in an effort to amass as much support as possible. On the other hand, secure politicians will favor the electoral rules that brought them into power while opposing laws that allow new parties and participants. The research targets Latin America where party systems with varying degrees of representativeness were replaced first by military regimes that have recently given way to democratically elected governments.