No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
The Role of Electoral Coordination in Party Formation: Explaining the Origin of the Uruguayan Frente Amplio in 1971
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2025
Abstract
What is the origin of the Frente Amplio? While most contributions focus on party-building strategies and the electoral success of the Left, scholars have overlooked the previous process of party formation. This paper studies the Frente Amplio's formation in 1971 as a case of complete electoral coordination between extant parties, factions and individual left-wing politicians who understood the electoral inefficiencies of competing with each other. Making use of a historical narrative, our account complements other approaches, suggesting the critical role of electoral coordination, favoured by two systemic conditions (electoral stability and programmatic politics) that eased the process of party formation.
¿Cuál es el origen del Frente Amplio? Si bien la mayoría de las contribuciones se centran en las estrategias de construcción partidaria y el éxito electoral de la Izquierda, los investigadores han pasado por alto el proceso previo de este proceso. Este artículo estudia la formación del Frente Amplio en 1971 como un caso de completa coordinación electoral entre partidos, facciones y políticos individuales de Izquierda que vieron los problemas electorales de competir entre sí. Haciendo uso de una narrativa histórica, nuestro material complementa otros enfoques y sugiere el papel fundamental de la coordinación electoral, favorecida por dos condiciones sistémicas (estabilidad electoral y política programática) que facilitaron el proceso de formación del partido.
Qual é a origem da Frente Ampla? Embora a maioria das contribuições se concentre nas estratégias de formação de partidos e no sucesso eleitoral da Esquerda, os estudiosos têm negligenciado o processo anterior de formação de partidos. Este artigo estuda a formação da Frente Ampla em 1971 como um caso de coordenação eleitoral completa entre partidos, facções e políticos individuais de Esquerda que perceberam a ineficiência eleitoral de competir entre si. Fazendo uso de uma narrativa histórica, nosso relato complementa outras abordagens, sugerindo o papel fundamental da coordenação eleitoral, favorecida por duas condições sistêmicas (estabilidade eleitoral e política programática) que facilitaram o processo de formação de partido.
Keywords
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press
References
1 Levitsky, Steven and Roberts, Kenneth M. (eds.), The Resurgence of the Latin American Left (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bentancur, Verónica Pérez, Rodríguez, Rafael Piñeiro and Rosenblatt, Fernando, How Party Activism Survives: Uruguay's Frente Amplio (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
2 Juan Pablo Luna et al. (eds.), Diminished Parties: Democratic Representation in Contemporary Latin America (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021); Pérez Bentancur et al., How Party Activism Survives; Rosenblatt, Fernando, Party Vibrancy and Democracy in Latin America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yaffé, Jaime, Al centro y adentro: La renovación de la izquierda y el triunfo del Frente Amplio en Uruguay (Montevideo: Linardi y Risso, 2005)Google Scholar; Garcé, Adolfo and Yaffé, Jaime, La era progresista (Montevideo: Fin de Siglo, 2004)Google Scholar; Lanzaro, Jorge, ‘El Frente Amplio: Un partido de coalición, entre la lógica de oposición y la lógica de gobierno’, Revista Uruguaya de Ciencia Política, 12 (2000), pp. 35–67Google Scholar; Luna, Juan Pablo, ‘Frente Amplio and the Crafting of a Social Democratic Alternative in Uruguay’, Latin American Politics and Society, 49: 4 (2007), pp. 1–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
3 Queirolo, Rosario, The Success of the Left in Latin America: Untainted Parties, Market Reforms, and Voting Behavior (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Moraes, Juan A. and Luján, Diego, ‘The Electoral Success of the Left in Latin America: Is There Any Room for Spatial Models of Voting?’, Latin American Research Review, 55: 4 (2020), pp. 691–705CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Panizza, Francisco E., ‘The Social Democratisation of the Latin American Left’, European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 79 (2005), pp. 95–103CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jorge Lanzaro, ‘Uruguay: A Social Democratic Government in Latin America’, in Levitsky and Roberts (eds.), The Resurgence of the Latin American Left, pp. 348–74; Anria, Santiago et al., ‘Agents of Representation: The Organic Connection between Society and Leftist Parties in Bolivia and Uruguay’, Politics & Society, 50: 3 (2022), pp. 384–412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Melo, Carlos Ranulfo, ‘Participação, pluralismo e autonomia das lideranças: Partido dos Trabalhadores, Frente Ampla e Partido Socialista do Chile em perspectiva comparada’, Dados, 64: 3 (2021), pp. 1–39CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
5 Steven Levitsky and Kenneth Roberts, ‘Introduction: Latin America's “Left Turn”: A Framework for Analysis’, in Levitsky and Roberts (eds.), The Resurgence of the Latin American Left, pp. 1–28.
6 One of the most recent contributions on this topic is the work of Verónica Pérez Bentancur, Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez and Fernando Rosenblatt, ‘The Case of Uruguay's Frente Amplio’, in Luna et al. (eds.), Diminished Parties, pp. 29–47.
7 For this ‘evolutionary’ process of party formation, see Jorge Lanzaro, ‘De la izquierda corporativa a la izquierda “nacional y popular”’, in Jorge Lanzaro (ed.), La izquierda uruguaya: Entre la oposición y el gobierno (Montevideo: Fin de Siglo, 2002), pp. 20–46.
8 As noted by Pérez Bentancur et al., ‘The Case of Uruguay's Frente Amplio’, p. 30: ‘The FA was born in 1971, as a coalition of political organizations and as a movement of self-organized grassroots activists. Thus, FA leaders and activists usually refer to the FA as a combination of “coalition and movement”.’
9 Cox, Gary W., Making Votes Count: Strategic Coordination in the World's Electoral Systems (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cox, Gary W., ‘Electoral Rules and Electoral Coordination’, Annual Review of Political Science, 2 (1999), pp. 145–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
10 Steven Levitsky et al. (eds.), Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016).
11 Panebianco, Angelo, Political Parties: Organization and Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.
12 Pérez Bentancur et al., How Party Activism Survives.
13 See Margit Tavits, ‘Party System Change: Testing a Model of New Party Entry’, Party Politics, 12: 1 (2006), pp. 99–119; Ignacio Lago and Ferran Martínez, ‘Why New Parties?’, Party Politics, 17: 1 (2011), pp. 3–20.
14 Aldo Solari, ‘Réquiem para la izquierda’, Gaceta de la Universidad, 4: 22 (1962).
15 Cox, Making Votes Count; John H. Aldrich, Why Parties? The Origin and Transformation of Political Parties in America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995); Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); Maurice Duverger, Political Parties: Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State (London: Methuen, New York: Wiley, 1954); Stathis N. Kalyvas, The Rise of Christian Democracy in Europe (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1996); Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction’, in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives (New York: Free Press), pp. 1–64; Giovanni Sartori, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976).
16 Carles Boix, ‘Emergence of Parties and Party Systems’, in Carles Boix and Susan C. Stokes (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 499–521.
17 Aldrich, Why Parties?; Cox, Making Votes Count.
18 Lipset and Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures’.
19 Boix, ‘Emergence’. Putting this in the terms of Luna et al. on the functions of parties, for vertical interest aggregation to occur, horizontal coordination must be accomplished first. That is, no party could perform the task of aggregating and channelling social interests (as collective demands) without some previous form of electoral coordination among party leaders: Luna et al. (eds.), Diminished Parties, pp. 1–23.
20 Duverger, Political Parties; Sartori, Parties and Party Systems. The latter, however, offers not a historical but a conceptual evolution of the term ‘political party’. This approach is even less likely to be able to disentangle the factors accounting for party formation.
21 Aldrich, Why Parties? See also Jon X. Eguia, ‘The Origin of Parties: The United States Congress in 1789–1797 as a Test Case’, Economics & Politics, 25: 3 (2013), pp. 313–34; Josep M. Colomer, ‘On the Origins of Electoral Systems and Political Parties: The Role of Elections in Multi-Member Districts’, Electoral Studies, 26: 2 (2007), pp. 262–73.
22 Cox, Making Votes Count.
23 Aldrich, Why Parties?; Cox, Making Votes Count; Tavits, ‘Party System Change’; Lago and Martínez, ‘Why New Parties?’
24 Cox, Making Votes Count; Lago and Martinez, ‘Why New Parties?’; Brian F. Crisp, Santiago Olivella and Joshua D. Potter, ‘Electoral Contexts that Impede Voter Coordination’, Electoral Studies, 31 (2012), pp. 143–58; Diego Luján, ‘Diferenciación ideológica y coordinación estratégica en elecciones presidenciales en América Latina’, Colombia Internacional, 103 (2020), pp. 29–55.
25 Cox, Making Votes Count, p. 122.
26 Ibid., p. 159.
27 Herbert Kitschelt and Steven I. Wilkinson (eds.), Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
28 A specific literature of party formation based on fusions has evolved during recent years. These are forms of party formation where the calculations of getting into a fused party are not only based on their past electoral inefficiencies but also their chances to gain future policy and office benefits from the new agreement. These arguments not only presume that parties are able to calculate the benefits of office and policy before presidential elections in multiparty systems, but also the fact that those fusions will survive the election. See Raimondas Ibenskas, ‘Understanding Pre-Electoral Coalitions in Central and Eastern Europe’, British Journal of Political Science, 46: 4 (2016), pp. 743–61; Éric Bélanger and Jean-François Godbout, ‘Why Do Parties Merge? The Case of the Conservative Party of Canada’, Parliamentary Affairs, 63: 1 (2010), pp. 41–65; Thomas Poguntke, ‘Party Organisations’, in Jan W. van Deth (ed.), Comparative Politics: The Problem of Equivalence (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 156–79; David Denver and Hugh Bochel, ‘Merger or Bust: Whatever Happened to Members of the SDP?’, British Journal of Political Science, 24: 3 (1994), pp. 403–17.
29 Cox, Making Votes Count, p. 160; original emphasis.
30 Between 5 February and 10 March several other small leftist groups and legislators signed the agreement to join the FA officially, for example the Movimiento Pregón founded by Colorado Representative Alba Roballo and the Unión Popular associated with the Partido Blanco's Enrique Erro.
31 Authors’ interviews with Óscar O. Bottinelli (5 Oct. 2022) and Romeo Pérez Antón (31 Aug. 2022). Bottinelli was a parliamentary chronicler for the Uruguayan newspaper El País during the 1960s. After that he served as political secretary to the FA leader and first presidential candidate, Líber Seregni, from 1971 to 1987. Pérez was a member of the executive committee (political secretariat) of the PDC during the years prior to the formation of the FA.
32 Duverger, Political Parties.
33 Gerardo Caetano and José Rilla, ‘La izquierda uruguaya y el “socialismo real”’, in Hugo Achugar (ed.), La herencia del socialismo real (Montevideo: Fundación Friedrich Ebert, 1991), pp. 9–59.
34 The DVS was endorsed in 1910 (Law no. 3.640 of 11 July 1910) and incorporated in the 1918 Constitutional reform, becoming part of the electoral laws endorsed in 1925 that would govern elections during the majority of the twentieth century.
35 Scott Morgenstern, ‘Organized Factions and Disorganized Parties: Electoral Incentives in Uruguay’, Party Politics, 7: 2 (2001), pp. 235–56; Juan Andrés Moraes, ‘Why Factions? Candidate Selection and Legislative Politics in Uruguay’, in Peter M. Siavelis and Scott Morgenstern (eds.), Pathways to Power: Political Recruitment and Candidate Selection in Latin America (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2008), pp. 164–85; Daniel Buquet, Daniel Chasquetti and Juan Andrés Moraes, Fragmentación política y gobierno en Uruguay: ¿Un enfermo imaginario? (Montevideo: CSIC, 1998).
36 Until 1971, there was only one significant example of party split resulting in electoral inefficiency. Between 1942 and 1958, the Blanco party was split by a faction that competed under the label ‘Partido Nacional Independiente’. The party reunified in 1958 to win a national election and defeat the Colorados for the first time in Uruguayan history.
37 Authors’ interview with Bottinelli.
38 Indeed, although there were few ‘voter intention’ polls at that time in Uruguay, electoral victory was in the mind of leftist politicians during negotiations to form the FA. A survey conducted by Gallup in August 1970 maintained that the FA was at the forefront of electoral preferences among Montevideo voters (published in the newspaper El Faro, 27 Aug. 1971). Moreover, the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales at the Universidad de la República published the results of a public opinion survey conducted a few days before the election of November 1971 (Marcha, 5 Nov. 1971, pp. 13–14). The study concluded that the FA led the polls with 31% of vote intention, followed by the Partido Colorado with 21% and the PN (the Blancos) with 18%. 22% of respondents were undecided, and 8% did not respond. The FA led the electoral preferences in any scenarios analysed by the Instituto de Ciencias Sociales study.
39 Rodney Arismendi, ‘Primera Carta al Partido Socialista’, 25 April 1956, in Rodney Arismendi, La construcción de la unidad de la izquierda (Montevideo: Ediciones Fundación Rodney Arismendi, 2010), pp. 27–31.
40 Arismendi, ‘Segunda Carta al Partido Socialista’, 2 Oct. 1956, in Arismendi, ibid., pp. 32–42.
41 In 1966, FIDEL won five seats in the House of Representatives and one in the Senate.
42 This coordination dilemma among left-wing voters is in part what explains the electoral support for centre–left options within the traditional Colorado and Blanco parties such as the progressive Partido por el Gobierno del Pueblo, led by Senator Zelmar Michelini, within the Colorado party, or factions like Por la Patria within the Blanco party.
43 In Arismendi, La construcción, p. 76. Translations from Spanish are by the authors.
44 According to Esteban Valenti, an influential activist and former PCU member: ‘From the very beginning, the Frente Amplio was not only a sum of the parties. Although the Frente Amplio was born in 1971 as a partisan agreement, there is no doubt that at its birth it already represented something much more than the sum of these parties. We didn't grow just because we brought together political forces that were previously diffuse. If we add together the share of votes obtained by all the forces of the Frente Amplio that ran independently in 1966, we can see a doubling in 1971’: Marta Harnecker and Isabel Rauber, Frente Amplio: Los desafíos de una izquierda legal (Montevideo: La República, 1991), vol. 1, p. 47.
45 ‘Resolución del Congreso Nacional de Delegados de la Lista 99’, Cuadernos de Marcha, no. 46 (Feb. 1971), p. 7.
46 Arismendi, La construcción, p. 132.
47 Juan Pablo Terra in Cuadernos de Marcha, no. 47 (March 1971), p. 14.
48 Authors’ interview with Pérez, 31 Aug. 2022.
49 Marcha, no. 1515, 16 Oct. 1970, p. 24.
50 The constitutional reform approved during the 1966 election included the return to the uni-personal presidential system and the abandoning of the collegiate system of government adopted in 1952, and the creation of the Central Bank and of an Oficina de Planeamiento y Presupuesto (Ministry of Planning and Budgeting): see Julio María Sanguinetti and Álvaro Pacheco Seré, La nueva constitución: Ensayo (Montevideo: Alfa, 1971).
51 Cox, Making Votes Count, p. 158.
52 Mogens N. Pedersen, ‘The Dynamics of European Party Systems: Changing Patterns of Electoral Volatility’, European Journal of Political Research, 7: 1 (1979), pp. 1–26.
53 In 1942, the PN suffered an internal schism that led to the splitting off of a significant faction, the Partido Nacional Independiente (see note 36 above). This split continued until the PN was reunified in 1958, which led the party to electoral victory after 16 years of dominance by the Colorados. The coalition that enabled the return of the PN to government included the Liga Federal de Acción Ruralista, led by Benito Nardone, who had great influence over the rural population. This electoral arrangement – alongside the formation of the UP and FIDEL – can be seen as presaging the origin of the FA.
54 Luis E. González, Political Structures and Democracy in Uruguay (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991).
55 Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully (eds.), Building Democratic Institutions: Party Systems in Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995); Scott Mainwaring, ‘Party System Institutionalization in Contemporary Latin America’, in Scott Mainwaring (ed.), Party Systems in Latin America: Institutionalization, Decay, and Collapse (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 34–70; Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez and Fernando Rosenblatt, ‘Stability and Incorporation: Toward a New Concept of Party System Institutionalization’, Party Politics, 26: 2 (2020), pp. 249–60.
56 Arismendi, La construcción.
57 Authors’ interview with Carlos Baráibar, 27 Dec. 2023. In the 1960s Baráibar was Secretary-General of the PDC's youth wing. After that he had an extensive political career in the FA, being elected as deputy in the inaugural election of the FA in 1971. He was re-elected during the following elections, and he served as senator from 2005 to 2020.
58 Authors’ interview with Bottinelli.
59 S. M. Lipset and A. E. Solari, Elites y desarrollo en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Paidós, 1967); Carlos Real de Azúa, Uruguay: ¿Una sociedad amortiguadora? (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 1984); Jorge Luis Lanzaro, Sindicatos y sistema político: Relaciones corporativas en el Uruguay, 1940–1985 (Montevideo: FCU, 1986).
60 Adolfo Garcé, ‘La partitura, la orquesta, el director y algo más’, in Jorge Lanzaro (ed.), La ‘segunda’ transición en el Uruguay: Gobierno y partidos en un tiempo de reformas (Montevideo: CSIC, FCU, 2000), pp. 339–81.
61 Adolfo Garcé, Ideas y competencia política en Uruguay (1960–1973): Revisando el ‘fracaso’ de la CIDE (Montevideo: Trilce, 2002).
62 Michael Coppedge et al., ‘V-Dem Codebook v11.1 – March 2021’, Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project, https://www.v-dem.net/static/website/img/refs/codebookv111.pdf (URL accessed 22 Dec. 2024).
63 Lanzaro (ed.), La izquierda uruguaya.
64 Authors’ interview with Bottinelli.
65 Juan Pablo Terra, Del pachequismo al Frente Amplio (Montevideo: Nuevo Mundo, 1971).
66 Terra in Cuadernos de Marcha, no. 47.
67 The document is known as the ‘Llamamiento del 7 de octubre de 1970’ and was published in Cuadernos de Marcha, no. 46 (Feb. 1971), p. 5, where it was headed ‘Declaración’.
68 Caetano, Gerardo and Neves, Salvador, Líber Seregni: La unidad de las izquierdas (Montevideo: Banda Oriental, 2012)Google Scholar.
69 Juan Pablo Terra in Marcha, 16 Oct. 1970, pp. 13, 24.
70 Arismendi, La construcción, p. 98.
71 Ibid.
72 Ibid., pp. 98–9.
73 Quoted in Bayley, Miguel Aguirre, Frente Amplio: Libro del cincuentenario (Montevideo: Aguilar, 2021), p. 56Google Scholar.
74 Previtali, a Colorado legislator, declared that Pacheco's policies were responsible for ‘the split of the Batllista faction from the government and the Colorado party. When the emergency measures came into effect, Zelmar Michelini, Alba Roballo, Manuel Flores Mora and Amílcar Vasconcellos resigned from their cabinet posts … From within the Parliament there were increasing signs of unity against [Pacheco's] economic policies and in defence of political freedoms in an attempt to lift the emergency measures … Thus, the Movement for the Defence of Freedoms and Sovereignty was created. I would say that is a pre-Front.’ Quoted in Aguirre Bayley, Frente Amplio, p. 52.
75 Authors’ interview with Pérez, 31 Aug. 2022.
76 Ibid.
77 Regarding the role of agency in the process of the FA's formation, Baráibar said that ‘there was a lot of political will to agree, and the general pressure of the environment was very influential. We were in a moment of very harsh confrontation with pachequismo, with bordaberrismo, with the armed forces’ (authors’ interview with Baráibar).
78 Terra in Cuadernos de Marcha, no. 47, p. 15.
79 Aldrich, Why Parties?
80 Lipset and Rokkan, ‘Cleavage Structures’.
81 Boix, ‘Emergence of Parties and Party Systems’.