‘Sons of war’: parties and party systems in post-war El Salvador and Cambodia

This study argues that individual parties and party competition in El Salvador and Cambodia today are still profoundly affected by the period of civil war that has long passed. The war-time origins of the main Salvadoran and Cambodian parties have left a deep imprint on their organizational structures and style of leadership, just as war-time political exclusion set the tone for unbalanced party competition after the war. Although El Salvador's party system is more institutionalized and pluralistic than Cambodia's, there have been clear cross-national patterns of unequal institutionalization and ruling party dominance that are a product of the war. International engagement ranging from election observation, election organization to party assistance has had some benefits, particularly for opposition parties. At the party system level, however, international support has only been of minor influence, with the possible exception of financial, economic and technical assistance to the government, which has served to accentuate the tendency towards dominance by the party in power.