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SUMMARY
This article offers reflections on the power relations between the executive and legislative branches of the Chilean state by examining the way political parties leveraged the electoral system to balance the weight of each branch in the configuration of government. The period from 1874 to 1924 is framed by a cycle of reforms to Chile’s 1833 constitution that were pushed through by liberal sectors to limit the power of the executive under the country’s presidential regime, efforts that contributed to a final breakdown of the presidential regime following civil war in 1891. That year the victorious revolutionary forces implemented a parliamentarian system that remained in place until it was overthrown by a military coup. The literature on this process has studied the use of legislative manoeuvres such as obstruction, accusation and filibuster by political parties to weaken the executive power. Little has been written, however, about the way parties exploited the rules and procedures of the electoral system and, specifically, the use of official complaints and the process known as calificación (qualification) by which congress audited final election results. This article will help fill that void, focusing on understanding how both practices worked and the effects that the election reforms of 1874, 1884 and 1890 had on them.
Notes
1 Internal Regime Law of 10 January 1844, R. Anguita, Leyes promulgadas en Chile, 1810–1901 (Santiago, 1902), pp. 416–35; Law on Organization of Municipalities of 8 November 1854, s/n. http://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=1019770
2 Majors acted in accordance with the law and instructions of the president of the republic; governors were subordinated to the majors.
3 Constitución Política de la República de Chile de 1833, Cap. IX, Art. 126 (Santiago, 1833). The amount of rent was determined by law in each province.
4 Reglamento de Elecciones, 30 November 1833, in Boletín de las Leyes y de las Órdenes y Decretos del Gobierno, Libro Sexto (Santiago, 1841). It was only from 1884 that elections were held on a single day.
5 Election Law of 1861.
6 According to the 1833 constitution, the elections of deputies and municipal authorities were direct and for senators and the president of the republic they were indirect in two degrees. This type of election means that active citizens vote in the first instance for voters. Then, in the second instance, this assembly of electors votes for president of the republic in the presidential elections, and senators in the election of the Senate.
7 Reglamento Interno de la Cámara de Diputados (Santiago, 1846).
8 In seven of the eleven parliamentary elections that took place between 1833 and 1864, the opposition presented candidates very sparsely. S. Collier, La Construcción de la República. 1830–1865. Política e ideas (Santiago, 2005), p. 72.
9 J. Heisse, Historia de Chile, El periodo parlamentario 1861-1925, 2 vols (Santiago, 1974–82), vol. I; R. Millar, ‘El Parlamentarismo chileno y su crisis, 1891–1924’, in O. Godoy (ed.), Cambio de régimen político (Santiago, 1992).
10 In the 1880s, the emblematic laws dealing with this controversy are the secular cemetery law of 1883, and the civil matrimony law and the civil registry law, both enacted in 1884.
11 S. Valenzuela, Democratización vía reforma (Buenos Aires, 1985), pp. 54–5.
12 ‘La propiedad de un inmueble o de un capital en jiro de la importancia que la ley requiere, o el ejercicio de una industria o arte, o el goce de un empleo, renta o usufructo que guarden proporción con el valor del inmueble o con el capital en jiro de que acaba de hablarse.’ Constitución Política de 1833, Art. 8°.
13 Election Law of 12 November 1874, Art. No. 32, http://www.leychile.cl/Navegar?idNorma=1023193
14 Sesiones de Cuerpos Legislativos de la República de Chile (from now on SCL), Cámara de Diputados (from now on chamber of deputies), Ordinary, 2°, 6 June 1876.
15 Valenzuela, Democratización; A. Joignant, ‘El lugar del voto. La Ley Electoral de 1874 y la invención del ciudadano-elector en Chile’, Estudios Públicos 81, (2001), pp. 245–75; R. Sagredo, ‘Prácticas Políticas en Chile, 1870–1886’, Estudios Públicos 78, (2000), pp. 209–42; O. Daniel Flores López, ‘La elección de 1876. La campaña de los pueblos’ (undergraduate thesis to qualify for the Bachelor of Arts degree in history, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, 1998); A. Prats, Observaciones a la ley vigente. Memoria de Prueba para optar al grado de Licenciado ante la Comisión Universitaria, 1876 (Santiago, 1976); B. Vicuña Mackenna, El viaje del señor Vicuña Mackenna a las provincias del sur (Valparaíso, 1875).
16 Valenzuela, ‘Instituciones’, p. 421.
17 N. Sánchez, El derecho escrito i las prácticas. Estudio sobre el Reglamento Interno de la Cámara de Diputados (Valparaíso, 1911).
18 El Atacameño, Copiapó and La Opinión de Talca, 9 October 1875; El Mercurio, Valparaíso; El Ferrocarril, Santiago; La Juventud, San Fernando; La Democracia, Concepción, 10 October 1875.
19 P. Ibarra, ‘Las Juntas de Mayores Contribuyentes en el sistema electoral chileno decimonónico. Implementación y composición en 1875’, Historia 2, (2015), pp. 275–302.
20 J. Miguel Irarrázaval, El Presidente Balmaceda, 2 vols (Santiago, 1940).
21 SCL, Deputies, Ordinary, 2°, 6 June 1876.
22 SCL, Deputies, Ordinary, 2° and 3°, dated 6 and 8 June 1876.
23 Collier, República.
24 A. Góngora (ed.), Domingo Santa María González (1824–1889). Epistolario (Santiago, 2015).
25 SCL Diputados, Ordinary, 1 and 2 June, 1885.
26 Irarrázaval, Balmaceda, vol. I, 344.
27 The state council was established by the 1833 constitution as a body that advised the president of the republic. Among its functions were advising the president regarding vacancies in the judiciary (both in the courts of first instance and superior courts) prior to nominations and taking positions on criminal accusations made against the government’s internal agents.
28 I. Mauricio Obando, ‘The Congressional Committee System of the Chilean Legislature, 1834–1924’, Historia 44, (2011), p. 68.
29 SCL, Índice Cámara de Diputados, 1885.
30 J.B. Díaz, Las elecciones de Vichuquén en 1885. Breve reseña de los principales sucesos acaecidos en el Departamento con motivo de las elecciones de Diputados y Senadores (Santiago, 1885), p. 79.
31 When Balmaceda came to power there were at least four liberal groups or related: the loyalists, the dissidents or ‘doctrinaire’, radicals and the National Party.
32 For more depth on the development of liberalism in Chile, see I. Jaksic and S. Serrano, ‘El gobierno y las libertades. La ruta del liberalismo chileno en el siglo XIX’, Estudios Públicos 118, (2010), pp. 69–105.
33 SCL, 4° Extraordinary, 1 December 1886.
34 The incompatibility requirements barred military officers, civil servants and state contractors from holding parliamentary office.
35 Irarrázaval, Balmaceda, vol. I, 350; R. Donoso, Las ideas políticas en Chile (Mexico City, 1946), p. 36.
36 Of the five liberal groups, the dissidents (or doctrinaires) joined the opposition formed by the nationals, nationalized liberals and radicals in October 1889, organized in congress as the ‘Quadrilateral’ – this was the first parliamentary opposition majority that Balmaceda had faced.
37 S. Valenzuela, ‘La ley electoral de 1890 y la democratización del régimen político chileno’, Estu-dios Públicos 71, (1998), p. 280.
38 Ponce de León, Competencia, p. 10.
39 Millar, Parlamentarismo, p. 274.
40 Paul Reinsch, ‘Parliamentary Government in Chile’, The American Political Science Review 3, (1909), p. 533.
41 Direct election of the president was later established by Chile’s 1925 constitution.
42 There were two judges of the supreme court, one from the Santiago court of appeals, a president or vice-president of the senate (designated by lot) and a state council elected by the chamber of deputies.
43 I. Valdés, Prácticas Parlamentarias (Santiago, 1906), p. 27.
44 M. Rivas Vicuña, Historia Política y Parlamentaria de Chile, 3 vols (Santiago, 1964), vol. I: Las administraciones de 1891 a 1910, p. 247.
45 Law No. 2.453, 4 February 1911.
46 SCL, Deputies, Ordinary, 4, dated 8 June 1912.
47 J. Maza, Sistemas de Sufrajio y Cuestión Electoral (Santiago, 1913), pp. 49–50.
48 SCL, Deputies, Ordinary, 11, dated 18 June 1912.
49 SCL, Deputies, Ordinary, 13, dated 21 June 1912.
50 El Mercurio, 24 February 1912.
51 The term is used by J.A. Etchepare and V.H. García in ‘El Parlamentarismo a la chilena’, Revista Atenea 457, (1988), p. 457.
52 R. Millar, La elección presidencial de 1920. Tendencias y prácticas políticas en el Chile parlamentario (Santiago, 1981).
53 C. Hasbun, ‘TRICEL: Historia, legislación comparada y revisión de sus funciones’, Debates de Política Pública 16, (2016), p. 3; M. Ponce de León, ‘Estado y elecciones. La construcción electoral del poder en Chile, siglos XIX y XX’, in Historia Política de Chile, 1810–2010, vol. Estado y Sociedad, eds Iván Jaksic and Francisca Rengifo (Santiago).
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Macarena Ponce de León Atria
Macarena Ponce de León Atria is an assistant professor at the Institute of History of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In 1999 she obtained a DEA (Diplôme d’études appliquées) at Paris I, Sorbonne-Pantheon, and finished her PhD at the Catholic University of Chile in 2007 where she was a postdoctoral fellow. She was a visiting fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies (University of Notre Dame, USA) and at the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institute in Berlin. Her main fields of research are the social and political history of Chile in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She specializes in the study of the relationship between society and the state through private charity and public welfare, and education. Her current research project focuses on the practices of political representation and the expansion of political citizenship in the twentieth century. She is author of Gobernar la pobreza. Prácticas de caridad y beneficencia en la ciudad de Santiago, 1830–1890 (Santiago, 2011); and the joint editor with Sol Serrano of the collective volumes Historia de la educación en Chile, 1810–2010, volumes I and II (Santiago, 2012).
Antonia Fonck Larraín
Antonia Fonck Larraín is a Master’s degree candidate at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. In 2014 she obtained a degree in history at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Her main fields of research are the political history of Chile and history of international relations in the twentieth century. Her ongoing research studies the relations between Chile and the United States between the years of 1970 and 1973, analysing the declassified diplomatic papers contained in the Department of State’s series Foreign Relations of the United States. This thesis is supported by the FONDECYT project ‘Las relaciones de Chile con los paises sudamericanos, 1964–1980’ n° 1160098 with Professor Joaquín Fermandois.