Electoral Reform, Institutional Change, and Party Adaptation in Uruguay

Uruguay's stable, institutionalized party system has undergone substantial changes in recent years, both from the increasing electoral strength of the left and from changes made to the electoral system in 1996. Analyzing the debut of that new system in the 1999 national and 2000 municipal elections, this article concludes that Uruguay is moving from what was a fairly evenly divided three-party system to one in which the longstanding traditional parties will confront, as a bloc, the stronger left. The electoral analysis shows that the bloc dynamic took over whenever elections were close between the left and one of the traditional parties.