Venezuela: The Life and Times of the Party System - Political ...

elaboration of candidate lists for councilors and mayors has led to confrontations (some very
severe) between national and local leaders within the parties.
Direct elections for state governors are another recent and important innovation in the
electoral system. 1 Prior to 1989, governors were appointed officials serving at the pleasure of
the President of the Republic. As in the case of municipal elections, direct gubernatorial elections
have opened new space for political participation on the part of previously uninvolved citizens and
groups, narrowing the distance between voters and elected officials and reinforcing the tendency
to decentralize power. The results of the first gubernatorial elections were mixed. Relatively high
abstention rates in these elections suggests that they did not trigger the degree of ‘civic
enthusiasm’ hoped for. 2 Still they did succeed in personalizing and localizing elections, this time
at an even more important politico-administrative level. They also opened spaces for smaller
parties and allowed experimentation with new forms of opposition.
Despite these multiple reforms, the party dominance of AD and COPEI remains apparent.
In the December 1989 elections, of a possible 20 state governorships, AD won 11, COPEI 6, and
MAS and Causa R one each. Under the former electoral formula, all twenty governors would
have gone to AD. In any case, AD’s apparent success is somewhat deceptive; the party lost in
the most populous states with Aragua, Carabobo, Bolívar, Merida, Miranda, and Zulia all going to
the opposition (Table 9). Furthermore, several governors’ races saw the formation of coalitions
and alliances among opposition groups which in some cases proved crucial to the victory of
certain candidates. 3
Direct elections for mayors were also introduced in 1989, along with ‘preference voting’
for municipal councilors. Under this system, voters may either vote for the entire list proposed by
a party, or choose their preferred candidates by name from among all registered candidates even
when their names appear on separate party lists. 4 According to one of its founders, the purpose
1 The method for choosing state governors sparked bitter debate in the Constitutional
Assembly of 1946-47. During debates that led to the Constitution of 1961, a similar confrontation
was avoided by adopting the ‘temporary’ solution (which lasted nearly thirty years) of presidential
designation of governors until the matter could be resolved definitively. See Kornblith (1991).
2 Orlando Contreras Pulido, director of municipal affairs for COPEI, predicted that direct
popular election of governors, mayors, and municipal councilors “will generate civic enthusiasm in
a population wearied by the formal and routinized practice of democracy. [They will give] a
second wind to a system which 31 years after its founding has fallen into elitism, and is therefore
distant from the people and absolutely disoriented in regard to its purposes” (Contreras Pulido
1989, 56-57, italics added).
3 For example, in the state of Carabobo, the COPEI candidate won with 46.6 percent of the
vote. Of this total, 31.3 percent came from COPEI supporters, 11.4 percent from MAS voters,
and the rest from votes cast for smaller groups and factions. The AD candidate won 45 percent
of the total vote.
4 These innovations were established by the reform of the Ley Orgánica del Régimen
Municipal in 1988 and by the partial modification of the Ley Orgánica del Sufragio in 1989.
According to law, each voter may vote for as many names as equal the total number of
candidates to be elected in the municipality [Ley Orgánica del Sufragio, article 161].