The Enduring Presence of Religion in Chilean Ideological Positionings and Voter Options
| Autor: | Timothy R. Scully, Nicolás M. Somma, J. Samuel Valenzuela |
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| Rok vydání: | 2007 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Comparative Politics. 40:1-20 |
| ISSN: | 2151-6227 0010-4159 |
| Popis: | Beginning in the mid nineteenth century, religion has played an important role in shaping the Chilean party system. Conflicts developed at that point between those wishing to base poli cies on Catholic doctrine as well as to preserve the church's influence over public institutions and those who preferred forging a more secular world. The first group formed the Conservative Party, and the second gravitated to the Liberals or to the more extreme Radicals. At the turn of the twentieth century, divisions over socioeconomic policies and the rise of the labor movement added a second layer of conflicts that generated new political organizations on the left, most importantly the Communist and Socialist parties. As a result, the parties formed primarily out of the religious/secular cleavage had to position themselves along the new left-to-right ideological axis, while those on the left had to do the same regard ing the older religious/secular division. The Liberals drifted to the right, while the Radicals assumed deliberately centrist positions. The Conservatives split into a Social Christian group that reflected new Catholic social teachings and a Traditionalist one with rightist views. In turn, Communists and Socialists adopted anticlerical positions that easily blended with those held by the Radicals.1 While no one has disputed the importance of these religious and class conflicts in form ing and reshaping Chile's party system prior to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), analysts of current Chilean politics have argued that such factors, in particu lar religion, are presently irrelevant. The party system has been recast into two coalitions, and to understand this dualism, writes Eugenio Tironi, "one should not look to the old social cleavages." Its origins, he adds, "lie in a new political-cultural cleavage, namely the author itarian/democratic one, that was forged in the period 1973-90 and was crystallized by the YES/NO option in the referendum organized by Pinochet in 1988."2 Pinochet's defeat opened the way for a restoration of democracy under the leadership of a coalition of center and leftist parties, the Concertation of Parties for Democracy, that was created to advocate a "no" vote. It has constituted all governments since then, while the center-right and right forces that sided with Pinochet, grouped in a coalition presently called Alliance for Chile, have become the opposition. Chile's unusual binomial electoral formula helps reinforce the predominance of these two coalitions in the party system.3 However, Tironi does not assert that this new cleavage has completely trumped the ear lier ones. With Felipe Agiuero, he argues that the yes/no split has subsumed the class divide.4 |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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