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This article explains the twentieth‐century Latin American shift from majoritarian to proportional representation (PR) electoral systems. It argues that PR was introduced when the electoral arena changed significantly and threatened the power of the dominant party. The adoption of PR was therefore an effort by the established party to retain partial power in the face of absolute defeat. Majoritarian systems remained in place when the incumbent party was strong enough to believe that it could gain a plurality of the votes despite electoral changes. An empirical analysis of 20 countries over 104 years (1900–2004) provides support for this argument.

This article explains variation in the electoral trajectories of Latin American traditional parties since transitions to democratic governments in the late 20th century until the first half of the 2000s, when democracies were already consolidated. This article addresses the question of why some parties suffer more than others under challenging contextual conditions, or why some parties are able to weather difficult external environments, e.g. economic crises, institutional reforms or political scandals, while others fail. This study argues that the internal organization of parties matters: it affects their ability to react and survive, especially in contexts of environmental change. Variation in parties' internal characteristics explains different outcomes in their electoral performance. An empirical analysis of 48 traditional parties over almost three decades provides support for this argument.

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is an Open Access publication. It may be read, copied and distributed free of charge according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

el siguiente artículo tiene como objetivo reseñar algunos de los hechos, procesos y decisiones de carácter público que definieron la política nacional colombiana durante 2011. a lo largo del año, el gobierno de Juan manuel santos tomó decisiones que reflejaron cambios con respecto a las políticas de su antecesor, Álvaro uribe. en este documento se hace énfasis en ello. dada la importancia que adquirieron las elecciones presidenciales y legislativas de 2010, acá se incluye un balance de las mismas. Las siguientes secciones resumen temas sobresalientes de la realidad nacional; resultados electorales de comicios nacionales y locales; cambios institucionales sustantivos; y aspectos que caracterizan a las ramas del poder público.

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