Party fractionation and political discipline in the National Party government

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to identify the system of exchanges that makes a "government of minorities" feasible in a scenario of multiple and internally divided parties, taking as an object of analysis the relationship within the governing party.
To this end, the government of the National Party is studied in the period between 1990 and 1993, in the face of the challenge assumed by Herrerismo to concretize political reform, especially the reform of the State. The analysis focuses on the relationship between the two major sectors of the Party: the Herrerismo and the Movimiento Nacional de Rocha (MNR). It is argued as a hypothesis that the articulation between a centralized state regulation mode and a pluralism of fractional parties finds forms of resolution through the logic of discipline and self-regulation of the different sectors. Based on the establishment of these mechanisms of intraparty discipline is the question that is intended to answer.