Electoral systems for Congress Election in Colombia (1821-2002)

This report describes the successive electoral systems adopted by single party regimes or hegemonies (liberal or conservative) in Colombia since independence time. The two Colombian traditional parties were founded in 1847-48, and they were violent agents of a conflict that it prolongs until 1953, always interested in searching control of state power. In this century state control was alternated between single party regimes or hegemonies that celebrate neither competitive nor truly election under exclusionary electoral systems. Simple majority, block vote, and tiny electoral districts were examples of a systems designed to hinder equal participation of the opposite party.

 After a military regime in a transition moment (1953-57) both parties enter in a long period of collusion and cartelization (1957. 2002) that allows state and political corruption, and at the same time the rise of an unstructured and volatile opinion vote.

The new constitution incites (1991) clientage intensification and the formation of small personal and family electoral enterprises which perverse dynam1c can only be stopped by an institutionalize electoral reform base in an affective electoral threshold.