ABSTRACT
On 27 January 1982 the military handed over power to President Roberto Suazo Córdova of the Partido Liberal de Honduras (PLH—Liberal Party) and a Congress overwhelmingly dominated by the two traditional parties—the PLH and the Partido Nacional de Honduras (PNH— National Party). Since 1982 elections have been held every four years on schedule as dictated by the 1981 Constitution, and the traditional parties regularly alternate in power. Yet, scholars did not evaluate the civilian regime as ‘democratic’ until the late 1990s (see Mainwaring et al. 2001; Bowman et al. 2005). The major reasons for this disconnection between outward appearances and scholars’ evaluations was the powerful independent role that the military played in politics, plus the overwhelming influence of the US Government. Lack of autonomy of civilian elected officials, even as elections came to be increasingly fair and scandal-free, meant that the elected institutions of the Honduran Government were hampered by what Valenzuela (1992) calls ‘perverse elements’; in particular ‘tutelary powers’ and ‘reserved domains’. However, as the 2009 coup d’état that ousted President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales demonstrated, Honduras’ democratic regime still must contend with the perverse element of ‘lack of centrality of elections’.
