Los representantes se vinculan programática y no programáticamente con sus votantes. Ofrecen políticas públicas y resuelven demandas particulares de sus electores. Sobre esto último, en Chile la ley del lobby obliga a los alcaldes a hacer públicas sus agendas de relación directa con los ciudadanos, denominadas “audiencias”. Analizamos 44.162 audiencias para los 345 municipios entre 2015 y 2016. Concluimos, primero, que más del 80% de las audiencias están asociadas a demandas personales de los ciudadanos (audiencias no programáticas) y no a solicitudes de política pública (audiencias programáticas). Segundo, que en año de elecciones locales los alcaldes otorgan más audiencias no programáticas, mientras que en año de elecciones nacionales otorgan más audiencias programáticas. Tercero, que las audiencias son más recurrentes en municipios rurales. Cuarto, que los alcaldes hacen mayor uso del mecanismo, pero dejan de utilizarlo cuando ganan la elección por amplio margen. Con los alcaldes novatos sucede lo opuesto.
Parties and their leaders are linked programmatically and non-programmatically with citizens, incentivising the latter to vote in elections and seeking to influence their choices. In this paper, we analyse the effects of politician–voter linkages on the electoral performance of incumbent mayors in Chile and on electoral turnout in their municipalities. To measure the linkages, we use personal meetings that mayors hold with citizens. While some mayors use this mechanism to solve problems of general interest (programmatic meetings), others do so to provide bureaucratic advantages or benefits for their constituents (non-programmatic meetings). We use a database of 44,162 personal meetings aggregated from Chile’s 345 municipalities. We argue that increases in the number of meetings positively impact electoral turnout and increase the chances of success for incumbent mayors when they compete for re-election. This effect is particularly significant in the case of electoral performance and the re-election of mayors in municipalities with high levels of rurality. Finally, we report that the meetings not only help mayors to link with their constituents but also help them to publicise their political work.
In 2020 Chile began a constitution-making process that will culminate in writing a new constitution through a 155-member constitutional convention. The Chilean party system is often described as one of the most institutionalised in Latin America, so the election results of the convention’s members were even more surprising. Of the 155 people elected, only 50 (32.2%) are party members, 41 (26.4%) are independents adopted as candidates by a party, 48 (30.9%) are independents outside a party, and 17 (10.9%) are representatives of indigenous peoples, all of them independents. Compared to proximate legislative elections, the number of independent candidates (ICs) and winners was substantially higher. We suggest that this increase was not only due to a political climate of growing distrust of parties but also to an electoral law that allowed ICs to form electoral apparentments with one another, thus combining their votes and increasing their chances of success, especially in low-income municipalities of the capital.
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