Electoral decentralisation with weak parties. Analysis of Colombia's subnational elections

In this report, we analyse subnational electoral dynamics, reviewing some temporal patterns of both municipal and departmental elections in Colombia; however, we focus particularly on the most recent elections in 2019. Local and regional electoral dynamics are significantly decoupled from national politics and, despite the existence of the same party labels across all levels of government, we show that political parties are secondary actors in subnational elections whose central purpose is to satisfy legal requirements for candidate nomination. Leaders of political machines and other regional or local political organizations are the centre of subnational electoral politics. Therefore, parties are not the appropriate units of analysis to understand electoral (or post-electoral) subnational politics. In contrast, coalitions of variable composition that transcend parties shape processes of political cooperation and competition in local and regional electoral politics.