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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2022
The military coup that put an end to the government of Salvador Allende terminated a socialist experiment that drew considerable world attention. It also marked the demise of one of the most durable liberal democracies. Deviating sharply from the prevalent Third World pattern of political instability, Chile was able to establish a viable constitutional system by the middle of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, the dominant feature of Chilean politics became its political system composed of strong party organizations spanning the ideological spectrum. This was unique in Latin America. Though parties have been banned by the ruling military junta, and the parties of the left have been subject to violent repression, there is little doubt that Chilean party politics will continue to draw the attention of political analysts. The study of the evolution of political patterns in a Third World country, which are strikingly similar to those of France and Italy, should contribute to our understanding of phenomena such as political participation, the historicity of party alternatives, and the social bases of party politics in polarized societies. Furthermore, a thorough understanding of the Chilean party system before the coup will help to clarify the conditions that led to the breakdown, and, more importantly, the prospects for party politics in the future.
1. On electoral participation and the historicity of party alternatives, see the essays by Stein Rokkan in his Citizens, Elections, Parties (New York: David McKay Co., Inc., 1970). On the social bases of party politics in France and Italy, see Mattei Dogan's “Political Cleavage and Social Stratification in France and Italy,” in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, eds., Party Systems and Voter Alignments (New York: The Free Press, 1967), pp. 129-98. For Italy, see also Sidney Tarrow, “Economic Development and the Transformation of the Italian Party System,” Comparative Politics 1, no. 2 (January 1969):161-83.
2. For a fascinating example of the use of material from the Spanish Republic period and from Italy to speculate about the post-Franco party system, see Juan Linz “The Party System of Spain: Past and Future,” in Lipset and Rokkan, eds., Party Systems, pp. 197-282.
3. The only surveys available are the periodic surveys of Eduardo Hamuy, which are not based on national samples. With the exception of political surveys in the late 1950s, Hamuy's data is not available. Among the more limited and specialized surveys that have contributed greatly to our understanding of party politics is the one conducted by Alejandro Portes in marginal communities of Santiago. For a summary of his work, see his “Urbanization and Politics in Latin America,” Social Science Quarterly 52 (December 1971):697-720. An excellent secondary analysis of survey material is James Prothro and Patricio Chaparro's “Public Opinion and the Movement of the Chilean Government to the Left, 1952-1970,” in Arturo Valenzuela and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Chile: Politics and Society (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1975), pp. 67-114.
4. See Rafael López Pintor, Algunos aspectos de la participación política en Chile (Santiago: Instituto de Administración, 1969); Arturo Valenzuela, “The Scope of the Chilean Party System,” Comparative Politics 4 (January 1972):179-99; Gláucio Ary Dillon Soares and Robert L. Hamblin, “Socio-Economic Variables and Voting for the Radical Left: Chile: 1952,” American Political Science Review 61 (December 1967): 1053-65; Robert Ayres, “Electoral Constraints and the Chilean Way to Socialism,” in Valenzuela and Valenzuela, eds., Chile: Politics and Society, pp. 30-66.
5. The Journal of Politics 34 (August 1972): 774-96.
6. Included in the data bank arranged in several SPSS files are all elections—municipal, congressional and presidential—from 1912 to 1921 and from 1938 to 1973. In addition, the files contain data from the 1920, 1940, 1952, 1960 and 1970 population censuses; the 1960 and 1970 housing censuses; the 1930, 1955, and 1965 agricultural censuses; and other information such as municipal budgets and data on Campesino Federations. The author wishes to acknowledge the Duke University Research Council, The American Philosophical Society, and the Social Science Research Council, whose support contributed to the completion of the data bank over a four-year period.
7. Sinding is not the only one to rely exclusively on provincial data. Soares and Hamblin's “Socio-Economic Variables,” and Robert Ayres's “Electoral Constraints” also use provincial units.
8. For a discussion of the “ecological fallacy,” see Erwin K. Scheuch, “Cross-National Comparisons Using Aggregate Data: Some Substantive and Methodological Problems,” in Richard L. Merritt and Stein Rokkan, eds., Comparing Nations (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), pp. 131-68. See also W. Phillips Shively, “Ecological Inference: The Use of Aggregate Data to Study Individuals,” American Political Science Review 63 (December 1969): 1183-96, and the classic piece by W. S. Robinson, “Ecological Correlations and the Behavior of Individuals,” American Sociological Review 15 (June 1950): 351-57.
9. See Scheuch, “Cross-National Comparison,” p. 150.
10. Hubert M. Blalock, Jr., Causal Inferences in Non-experimental Research (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1964), p. 114.
11. Otis D. Duncan and Beverly Davis make that point in “An Alternative to Ecological Correlation,” American Sociological Review 18 (1958): 666, cited in Scheuch, “Cross National Comparison,” p. 152. As Scheuch notes, whether or not smaller subdivisions do approximate individual correlations depends on whether the reduction in the size of the unit does in fact lead to increasing control over the variability of individual units. See Scheuch, “Cross National Comparisons,” p. 153.
12. Sinding, “The Evolution of Chilean Voting Patterns,” pp. 780-81.
13. Ibid., p. 787.
14. The relation between urbanization and occupation using provincial data was -.96,.48,.77, and.93 with agriculture, mining, construction and industry, and services, respectively The same correlations with communal data are -.92,.32,.70, and.85. With the exception of the mining figures, provincial and communal units produce similar statistics.
15. See Ricardo Cruz-Coke, Geografía electoral de Chile (Santiago: Editorial del Pacífico, S.A., 1952), chap. 2.
16. Work still to be done includes a systematic examination of scattergrams for all correlations and the use of multiple regression analysis. Though preliminary perusal of scattergrams suggests that the linear assumption is valid and that there is no substantial difference between provincial and communal findings on this score, a much more thorough study is required to dispel the possibility that some of the relations might be curvilinear. Likewise, multiple regression analysis should clarify futher the strength of the independent variables and provide a clearer test of both the Sinding hypothesis and the alternative explanation suggested here.
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