Columbia International Affairs Online: Working Papers

CIAO DATE: 09/2008

Democracy, Parties and Political Finance in Latin America

Eduardo Posada-Carbó

April 2008

The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies

Abstract

This paper tries to link the topic of political finance to the wider question of democracy and political parties in Latin America. By doing so, it aims at providing a conceptual framework within which the subject of political finance could acquire some centrality, hitherto missing in both the academic literature and current debates. The first section examines the extent to which, in spite of renewed democratic developments in Latin America during the last two decades, dominant views of democracy in the region continue to neglect and even undermine the significance of political parties and elections in the workings of democracy. This is followed by a discussion of how prevalent concepts of democracy can impinge on the course of political reform. Admittedly any attempt at establishing such a link is fraught with difficulties, and I only venture a few suggestions by looking at the debate among opinion makers and legislators regarding the prospects for political reform in a single country: Colombia. In the last section, I discuss how public funding—a trend visible in most Latin American countries, apparently adopted to fight corruption and to guarantee equality—may be affecting political parties and party systems in the region. A central, underlying assumption of this paper is that ideas are paramount in shaping the course of policy making, thus conditioning any process of political reform.