Plural Municipal Councils in El Salvador: Democratic Debt or an Obstacle to Governance?

Abstract

The article presents an overview of the formation of the Municipal Councils in El Salvador, which are local governments and have the opportunity to meet their needs immediately. In El Salvador, from 2015, the election mechanism of the Municipal Councils will be tested when moving from one political system forming to plural integration, which is the proportional representation of parties competing for city hall. However, at the political level, the introduction of this reform opens the space for considering some possible scenarios; on the one hand, it may indeed promote greater citizen participation through the representation of political parties in contention, but in turn, it could lead to major problems in terms of governance, it is more difficult to make decisions among more interests are represented. However, this dilemma does not justify the failure to Plural Municipal Councils implemented before, because in all of Latin America have been local experiences in this format, but in El Salvador, so a measure like this means is that, political parties must start to working lower the guise of consensus and at least under the figure of opposition and make decisions based on general collective interests and less particular interests. This will lead to a further strengthening of the Salvadoran democratic system and a transparent and efficient management of public power.