The constant changes: reforms to the electoral systems of the legislatures in Latin America

“Reforming should be a process resulting from thorough analysis, but the frequency of these changes in Latin America seems to indicate the opposite.”

In Latin America, electoral reforms have been mostly used to strengthen the rights of certain sectors of the population, increase confidence in the democratic system, bolster political parties, and/or democratize certain public spaces. In this region, reforming has become the favorite response of decision-makers to address issues related to institutional functioning, political organization weakness, and the public’s perception of politics, as evidenced by the work of Flavia Freidenberg.

These constant changes to the electoral system have drawn the attention of researchers. Literature related to reform processes has focused on documenting, describing, and evaluating these modifications while proposing new adjustments. Despite the existence of comparative studies in the region, very few of these evaluate reforms over time. The Observatory of Political Reforms in Latin America, a joint project of the Secretariat for Strengthening Democracy of the Organization of American States and the Institute of Legal Research of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, has filled this knowledge gap by investigating, documenting, and assessing reforms from 1977 to the present.

One of the most common changes in Latin American countries has been made to the electoral systems of legislative bodies, i.e., the rules defining how power is accessed and distributed in these spaces. According to Boix, these types of modifications aim to change the way competition for positions of power occurs by altering its distribution. Consequently, the rules defining how representatives of the Legislative branch are elected are crucial, as regulations can determine actors’ incentives, the way political organizations compete, and which groups and/or sectors - racial, territorial, ideological, among others - are more likely to access power.

Although changing the electoral system is not a straightforward task, usually requiring constitutional amendments, from 1949 to the present, 106 reforms to the electoral system of legislatures have been recorded by nineteen Latin American countries (#ReformObservatory). An analysis of the frequency of reforms indicates that a significant portion of these took place in the 1990s, during which countries amended their Chambers or Congress electoral system up to 30 times (28.30% of the total). The second period with the highest number of reforms was the last decade (2010-2020), witnessing 24 changes (22.64%) (#ReformObservatory).

The assessment of these data aligns with what Flavia Freidenberg highlighted in her analysis of electoral reforms in Latin America. Reforming has become the immediate response of decision-makers to the demands of the citizenry, but also a response to the interests of political elites who use rules as a space to maximize power. Unlike Europe, which has been much more conservative in changing the rules of the game, the frequency of reforms in Latin America seems to indicate that these changes have been constant, rushed, and extremely repetitive.

Specifically, the countries that have most frequently reformed their legislative electoral systems during the studied period (from 1977 to the present) are Ecuador (thirteen changes), Mexico (eleven), and Peru (ten). Following these, Colombia (nine modifications), Bolivia (seven), Argentina (six), Guatemala, Honduras, and Panama (all with five changes). Brazil, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Paraguay, the Dominican Republic, and Venezuela share the same number of modifications (four changes). Finally, the countries with the fewest reforms are Uruguay (three), Costa Rica, and Haiti (two each).

This account of the number of reforms carried out by countries in the region highlights extreme stances. Countries with a higher number of legislative reforms have executed these changes extremely regularly. For example, on average, Ecuador’s legislative electoral system has been reformed approximately every three years, while in Peru, these modifications have occurred every four years. In contrast, the most stable electoral systems, Haiti and Costa Rica, changed their legislation only twice. Specifically, Haiti’s electoral system was reformed in 2011 and 2013. Meanwhile, reforms to Costa Rica’s legislative electoral system occurred in 1949 and 1998, spanning a 49-year interval.

The frequency of these changes adds to the fact that they are not minor alterations of the rules of the game. Reforms to the legislative electoral systems of Latin America have affected different dimensions of these systems. These changes encompass the principle of representation, the electoral formula, the number of chamber members, the number of electoral districts, the voting structure, the length of mandates, the possibility of reelection, the existence of a legal barrier, and recalls in the Legislature.

Regarding the principle of representation, only three countries modified this dimension in their Lower Chamber (Bolivia, Chile, and Ecuador) and two in the Upper Chamber (Bolivia and Mexico). On the other hand, the electoral formula is the dimension that has undergone the most reforms: seven countries modified this criterion for the Lower Chamber (Bolivia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Uruguay) and four for the Upper Chamber (Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico). In this context, Ecuador stands out as the country with the most drastic and concentrated modifications in a single dimension of the electoral system. The thirteen reforms to its electoral system have caused this country to change its electoral formula up to seven times. Consequently, Ecuadorian assembly members were elected using the quotient or residual voting, relative majority, D’Hondt system, corrected Imperiali quotient, weighted factor, Hare method, and finally, in 2019, the Webster method.

Similar to the electoral formula, the number of members in each Chamber has been frequently changed. In the analyzed period, from 1977 to the present, only seven out of 19 countries (Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela) did not modify the number of representatives in the Lower Chamber. However, the composition of the Upper Chamber was reformed for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. As for the number of electoral districts, these have been reformed on eight occasions for Lower Chambers (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, Nicaragua, Peru, and the Dominican Republic) and five times for Upper Chambers (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico).

The voting structure has undergone similar modifications to the electoral formula. In this case, eleven countries changed the composition of the lists for Lower Chambers, and only Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, and Venezuela did not change this criterion. For the Upper Chambers, only Bolivia and Colombia modified this dimension. In contrast, the mandate of representatives (number of years in office) is one of the dimensions with less variation, as only Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua made reforms to change this aspect in the Lower Chamber. In the Upper Chamber, the only country that changed the mandate of its representatives is Colombia.

Another aspect that has remained relatively stable within the legislative electoral systems is the possibility of reelection by representatives. Of the region’s countries, only four (Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela) changed the conditions for Lower Chamber members to seek reelection. For the Upper Chamber, only Chile and Mexico have reformed this aspect.

However, the legal barrier is an aspect of the electoral system that has moderately changed in the region; seven countries (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the Dominican Republic) have carried out reforms for the Lower Chamber, and only two (Colombia and Mexico) for the Upper Chamber. Finally, the last dimension, the recall of Legislative members, was only introduced in five countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Venezuela).

These constant changes to the rules of the electoral system and its dimensions only foster uncertainty about how positions are chosen and how political organizations and citizens participate. Without clear rules or stability in how representatives are chosen, there is little possibility of creating strong institutions that produce predictable results and, in turn, a degree of governability. Reforming should be a process resulting from thorough analysis, but the frequency of these changes in Latin America seems to indicate the opposite.