Electoral Reform in Latin America

Electoral rules have been considerably more fluid in developing than in consolidated democracies. Latin American democracies have experimented with a wide array of electoral rules to elect presidents and legislators. Moreover, reforms have not been limited to the national level. Politicians in second-level units such as states or provinces, when not constrained by the national constitution, often played the same game. In all these cases, since institutions have partisan consequences, the chance of a reform creates incentives for strategic manipulation. A growing body of literature, heavily influenced by distributive models used to examine reforms in consolidated democracies, has provided a better understanding of how politicians in Latin America craft the rules of the electoral game. Three main areas have attracted most of the research attention. First, research on presidential elections has examined the adoption of more permissive electoral formulas and the reform of reelection rules over recent decades. Second, literature on legislative elections has devoted considerable attention to the rules shaping the proportionality of the seat allocation, as well as to the adoption of affirmative mechanisms such as quotas and reserved seats. Third, research has analyzed changes in who is allowed to vote, i.e., the extension of voting rights; and in how voters cast their votes, i.e., the adoption of new voting procedures. Though this review will be specially focused on the adoption of new rules, it will also include research showing the consequences of those reforms.