The hypothesis of this article is that in Latin America govern ment parties do not dominate the policy-making process, unlike in some European countries. Only some countries of the region have developed coherent programs and the institutional forms needed for the party-government role to be fulfilled as occurs in the European model. This factor maintains a direct relationship with the many existing diffi culties preventing young Latin American democracies from consolidating. To prove this hypothesis, the article suggests an analytical methodology allowing the degree of influence of political parties on the policy-making process to be measured.
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