Reforma electoral y fragmentación política: el caso Venezuela

Abstract

This article examines electoral reforms to the Venezuelan municipal electoral system between 1984 y 1995 to confirm theories on the effect of the electoral system on the party system. We examine the effect of district magnitude, electoral threshold and the electoral formula on the effective number of electoral and legislative parties. We affirm that successive reforms generated expectations that encouraged many political parties and electoral groups to compete in local elections, but that those reforms did not result in a significant number of additional seats for them. This contributed to the furtber erosion of public trust in the electoral institution and in the two traditional political parties.