Political competition and electoral fraud: A Latin American case study

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 199-234

  Molina, Iván ^a   Lehoucq, Fabrice Edouard ^b  

^a UNIVERSIDAD DE COSTA RICA   (Costa Rica)

^b INDIANA UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0001456279     PISSN: 00221953     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1162/002219599551958     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. For two recent efforts that ignore or downplay the role played by institutional arrangements in Central American political development, see Jeffrey Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America (Cambridge, Mass., 1997);
2. Deborah J. Yashar, Demanding Democracy: Reform and Reaction in Costa Rica and Guatemala, 1870s-1950s (Stanford, 1997).
3. Two standard works that dismiss pre-reform systems as "oligarchic" are Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement and Regime Dynamics in Latin America (Princeton, 1991);
4. Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, Capitalism and Democracy (Chicago, 1992).
5. For a recent discussion of this shortcoming for Latin America more generally, see Jonathan Hartlyn and Arturo Valenzuela, "Democracy in Latin America since 1930," in Leslie Bethell (ed.), Latin America: Politics and Society since 1930 (New York, 1998), 3-66.
6. Lehoucq, "The Institutional Foundations of Democratic Cooperation in Costa Rica," Journal of Latin American Studies, XXVI (1996), 329-355;
7. Lehoucq, idem, Instituciones democráticas y conflictos políticos en Costa Rica (San José, 1998).
8. Molina, "'Destacen ustedes dos': Práctica e ideología del fraude electoral en la Costa Rica de 1928," in Margarita Vannini and Francis Kinloch (eds.), Memoria: Política, cultura y sociedad en Centroamerica, Siglos XVIII-XX (Managua, 1998), 95-107.
9. The logic of using charges of fraud to justify armed revolt against central state authority is discussed in Lehoucq, "Institutional Foundations," 335-341.
10. Peter H. Argersinger quotes four scholars of United States politics, including W. Dean Burnham, who claim that fraud is an intractable problem to study. See his "New Perspectives on Election Fraud in the Gilded Age," in idem (ed.), Structure, Process and Party: Essays in American Political History (New York, 1992), 107-108.
11. For a similar statement from a historian of Argentina, see Paula Alonso, "Politics and Elections in Buenos Aires, 1890-1898: The Performance of the Radical Party," Journal of Latin American Studies, XXV (1993), 473.
12. For works that refer elliptically to fraud, see Richard Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Stanford, 1990), esp. 133-145;
13. Frank O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties: The Unreformed Electoral System of Hanoverian England, 1734-1832 (Oxford, 1989).
14. The revival of interest in electoral politics and the prevalence of fraud in pre-reform Latin America is evidenced by a growing number of works. See, in particular, Eduardo Posada-Carbó, "Limits of Power: Elections under the Conservative Hegemony in Colombia, 1886-1930," Hispanic American Historical Review, LXXVII (1997), 245-279;
15. idem (ed.), Elections Before Democracy: The History of Elections in Europe and Latin America (New York, 1996);
16. idem, "Elections and Civil Wars in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: The 1875 Presidential Campaign," Journal of Latin American Studies, XXVI (1994), 621-649;
17. Vincent C. Peloso and Barbara A. Tenenbaum (eds.), Liberals, Politics and Power: State Formation in Nineteenth-Century Latin America (Athens, 1996);
18. Antonio Annino (ed.), Historias de las elecciones en Iberoamérica, siglo XIX (Buenos Aires, 1995);
19. Carlos Milamud (ed.), Partidos políticos y elecciones en América Latina y la Peninsula Ibérica, 1830-1920 (Madrid, 1995):
20. Hilda Sábato, "Citizenship, Political Participation and the Formation of the Public Sphere in Buenos Aires, 18505-18805," Past & Present, 136 (1992), 139-163;
21. idem and Elías Palti, "¿Quein votaba en Buenos Aires? práctica y teoria del sufragio, 1850-1880," Desarrollo Económico, XXX (1990), 395-424;
22. Jorge Bassadre, Elecciones y centralismo en el Perú: Apuntes para un esquema histórico (Lima, 1980);
23. Natalio R. Botana, El orden conservador: la política argentina entre 1880-1916 (Buenos Aires, 1979);
24. Germán O. E. Tjarks, "Las elecciones salteñas de 1876 (en estudio del fraude electoral)," Anuario de Historia, I (1963), 417-475.
25. Gary W. Cox and J. Morgan Kousser, "Turnout and Rural Corruption: New York as a Test Case," American Journal of Political Science, XXV (1981), 646-663;
26. O'Gorman, Voters, Patrons and Parties, 166-168;
27. Loomis Mayfield, "Voting Fraud in Early Twentieth-Century Pittsburgh, "Journal of Interdisciplinary History, XXIX (1993), 59-84.
28. Argersinger, "New Perspectives."
29. República de Costa Rica, Decretos relativos a elecciones, instrucciones para praticar las de segundo grado, conforme al sistema de voto proportional numérico y división territorial electoral (San José, 1893), 29.
30. Idem, "Ley de elecciones (7 August 1913)," Colección de Leyes y Decretos, 1913 (San José, 1914), 310-311.
31. From the twenty elections between 1901 and 1946, we exclude the deputy and senate elections held during the Tinoco dictatorship (1917-1919).
32. "Demanda de nulidad de las elecciones presidenciales del 13 de Febrero de 1944 (24 Febrero 1944)," La Gaceta, 56 (March 8, 1944), 386-387. The petition written after the 1944 election was signed by León Cortés, Manuel Castro Quesada, Ricardo Castro Beeche, Víctor Trejos, Lucas R. Chacón, Emilio Valverde, Roberto Salazar Mata, Benjamín Hernández, Gonzalo Martínez, Alfredo Castro Fernández, Francisco Jiménez Rodríguez, Celio Romo, and Manuel Antonio González Herran. The documentary appendixes were not printed along with this request for nullification.
33. Lehoucq and Molina, "The Size of the Costa Rican Electorate during the Old Republic (1897-1948): Methods and Findings," unpub. paper (San José, 1997).
34. On the Central Valley, see, in particular, Victor Hugo Acuña and Molina, Historia económica y social de Costa Rica (1750-1950) (San José, 1991);
35. Carolyn Hall, El Café y el desarrollo histórico-geográfico de Costa Rica (San José, 1976);
36. Lowell Gudmundson, Costa Rica Before Coffee: Society and Economy on the Eve of the Export Boom (Baton Rouge, 1987);
37. Lowell Gudmundson, idem, "Peasant, Farmer, Proletarian: Class Formation in a Smallholder Economy, 1850-1950," Hispanic American Historical Review, LXIX (1989), 221-257;
38. Molina, Costa Rica (1800-1850): el legado colonial y la génesis del capitalismo (San José, 1991);
39. Mario Samper, Generations of Settlers: Rural Households and Markets on the Costa Rican Frontier, 1850-1935 (Boulder, 1990).
40. Marc Edelman, The Logic of the Latifundio: The Large Estates of Northwestern Costa Rica since the Late Nineteenth Century (Stanford, 1992);
41. Ronny Viales, Después del enclave (San José, 1998).
42. Acuña, Los orígenes de la clase obrera en Costa Rica: las huelgas de 1920 por la jornada de echo horas (San José, 1986), 61-63;
43. Acuña, idem, "Clases subalternas y movimientos sociales en Centroamérica (1870-1930) ," in idem (ed.), Historia General de Centroamérica: La repúblicas agroexportadoras (Madrid, 1993), 288.
44. See Lehoucq, "The Origins of Democracy in Costa Rica in Comparative Perspective," unpub. Ph.D. diss. (Duke University, 1992), 162-336;
45. Lehoucq, "idem, "Class Conflict, Political Crisis and Democratic Practices: Reassessing the Origins of the 1948 Civil War," Journal of Latin American Studies, XXI (1991), 37-60.
46. Carlos Luis Fallas, Mamita Yunai (San José; orig. pub. 1941); many editions have since appeared. For a scathing portrait of Costa Rica and its political system,
47. see Mario Sancho, Costa Rica, Suiza centroamericana (San José, 1935).
48. Contrary to Cox and Kousser, who suggest that deflating turnout was a rational strategy given the principal-agent problems of monitoring the behavior of voters after the establishment of the secret franchise, we find no reports that parties paid voters to stay home. See Cox and Kousser, "Turnout and Rural Corruption," 655-661.
49. Jaime Cerdas Mora, La otra vanguardia (San José, 1993), 42. Cerdas Mora was a leader of the Communist Party. Translation from the Spanish is by Lehoucq, here and in the paragraphs to follow.
50. Our findings echo those of Maurice Agulhon, Historia vagabunda: ethnología y política en la Francia contemporánca (Mexico, D.F., 1994), 54-85.
51. Jiménez became president, even though no candidate won an absolute majority of the vote in the popular election. On February 22, 1932, Oreamuno, a pharmacist, called for the nullification of polling station 4, the District of Tucurrique and Las Vueltas in the Canton of, curiously enough, Jiménez in Cartago. See La Gaceta, 84 (April 21, 1932), 451.
52. The quoted accusation was made by Miguel Angel Veláquez on December 12, 1921 against a polling station in the District of Estrada, Canton of Matina, Limón. La Gaceta, 18 (January 22, 1922), 68.
53. Each province sent a small number of alternates to Congress to replace deputies who had been excused for reasons of health or who were otherwise indisposed. These alternates, however, could not help fill quorums or assume specific roles. For more details on electoral laws during this period, see Lehoucq, "Origins of Democracy," 61-63.
54. For the petition, see La Gaceta, 83 (April 16, 1924), 371-374.
55. Accounts that place these events in perspective include Victoria Ramírez, Jorge Volio y la revolución viviente (San José, 1989), 112-150
56. and Mario Samper K., "Fuerzas sociopolíticas y procesos electorales en Costa Rica, 1920-1936," Revista de Historia (San José), 19 (January-June 1989), 157-222.
57. This accusation was made on December 10, 1921 by Francisco Conejo Calva. La Gaceta, 19 (January 24, 1922), 72. Aguilar had been named temporary president in 1919 when the Tinoco dictatorship came to an end.
58. La Gaceta, 96 (April 30, 1930), 618. Chorreo was slang for a rain of fraudulent votes at a single location. It could, for example, include surreptitiously stuffing a ballot box or amassing voters with illegal identification cards to cast ballots.
59. This charge was made on December 5, 1915. La Gaceta, 2 (January 5, 1916), 9.
60. Orlando Salazar Mora, El apogeo de la república liberal en Costa Rica, 1870-1914 (San José, 1990), 219-220.
61. The petition itself was published in La Gaceta, 102 (May 5, 1906), 419-420.
62. Lehoucq, "Institutionalizing Democracy: Constraint and Ambition in the Politics of Electoral Reform," paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Political Science Association, August 28-31, 1997, Washington, D.C.
63. Lehoucq, Idem, "Origins of Democracy," 187-194.