Notes on Recent Elections: Ecuador's 2009 presidential and legislative elections

In: Electoral Studies, Volume 29, Issue 1, p. 186-189

Abstract

Ecuadorians have gone to the polls six times since 2006: to elect a president and a legislature, for a second round of that presidential election, to decide whether to hold a constitutional assembly (which they did), to elect delegates to that assembly, to ratify the new constitution (which they also did), and finally in April 2009 to elect a president, vice president, and unicameral legislature under the rules of the new constitution. The 2009 election represents the culmination of President Rafael Correa's attempt to sideline Ecuador's traditional political parties and remake the country's institutional apparatus in ways that further his "Citizens' Revolution" which, among other things, seeks to reduce Ecuador's gaping socioeconomic inequalities. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]