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UNIVERSITY PRESS

El Salvador's Negotiated Transition: From Low-Intensity Conflict to Low-Intensity

Democracy
Author(s): Richard Stahler-Sholk
S o urce: J ourn a l of In ter am er ican S tu d ies an d Wor ld Af f airs , W int er, 1 99 4, Vo l. 36 , No .
4 (Winter, 1994), pp. 1 -59
Published by: Cambridge University Press
Stable UR L: https: //www.js to r.o rg /st able/16 631 8

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 El Salvador's
Negotiated Transition:
From Low-Intensity Conflict to
Low-Intensity Democracy
Richard Stahler-Sholk*

INTRODUCTION
T 4 IKE the reports of Mark Twain's death, the claims of a wave
of democratization sweeping Latin Amer ica may b e
exaggerated. Yet the resurgence of electoral politics and the
receding of military rule since the 1980s are trends that hold
significance both for the future of Latin America and for inter-
Amer ican relations. The transitions from bureaucratic -
authoritarian rule in South America, and from the oligarchy-
military alliances in Central America, have been a major focus
of recent US policy attention. From the human rights approach
of the Carter administration to the Reagan rollback doctrine, US
policy became more actively engaged in controversial attempts
to define and impose "democracy" in the region.' After the end
of the Cold War, US action or inaction remained key factors in
the events surrounding the 1989 elections in Panama and the
1990 elections in Haiti and Nicaragua. Democratization has
become a global crusade, and election -monitoring and
peacekeeping have become growth industries. These trends

Richard Stahler-Sholk is Visiting Assistant Professor of Political Studies

at Pitzer College. He has worked (1984-89) at the Coordinadora Regional de
Investigaciones Economicas y Sociales (CRIES) and is the author of a number
of articles and chapters on Nicaraguan politics and political economy.
• Research for this article was conducted in El Salvador from January-
April 1994 under a grant from Pitzer College/Research and Awards Commit tee.
The author extends particular thanks to Deborah Barry, Jack Spence, and Philip
J. Williams for their helpful ad vice and comments, as well as to the JOURNAL's
reviewers.
1

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2 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

raise questions about the conditions under which elections can

bring democratization and the extent to which external actors
can play a positive role.
The Central American revolutions of the late 1970s and
'80s pointed up the ambiguous influence of external actors in
helping to effect transitions from authoritarian rule to democ-
racy. Ironic moments, such as Carter's letter of congratulations
to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza for supposed im-
provements in human rights in 1978 and Reagan's insistence
that Guatemalan General Rios Montt was getting a "bum rap,"
served only to highlight the tension between democracy and
the high priority which US policy accorded defeat of radical
revolutionary movements. The US-allied sectors that were
most committed to defeating the revolutionaries in Central
America were highly resistant to democratization and often
calculated that the US needed them more than they needed
continued US support. To overcome public and congressional
qualms about aiding repressive governments, US policy relied
on "low intensity conflict," a post-Vietnam strategy of minimiz-
ing the visibility and domestic cost of US intervention. At the
same time, US policy combined counterinsurgency with pres-
sure for democratic reforms, often a problematical formula. 2
With Central America no longer defined as a US policy priority
in the post-Cold War era, the negotiated peace accords and
1994 elections in El Salvador provide a good opportunity to
evaluate the prospects for democracy in this changing interna-
tional environment.

Nowhere did the United States commit more resources to

engineering the election of moderate reformers than in El
Salvador. Since 1980, the revolutionary forces of the Frente
FarabundoMarti de Liberacion Nacional(FMLN) had engaged
in armed struggle to overthrow a system characterized by
political exclusion, extreme social injustice, and repression of
dissent (Baloyra, 1982; Montgomery, 1993 and 1995). Pressure
from the United States helped to ensure a series of elections in
the 1980s, and covert funding helped to bring Jose Napoleon
Duarte and his Partido DemOcrata Cristlano (PDC) to office

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 STAHLER-SHOLK: EL SALVADOR'S NEGOTIATED TRANSITION 3

from 1984-89. However, despite the formal election of a

presumed Centrist, the oligarchy and military retained enough
real power to impose severe limits on reform and perpetuate
a system of widespread repression, which served only to
highlight the inconsistencies of US policy. 3 Elections, far from
democratizing El Salvador, merely worked to rationalize in-
creased US aid to a counterinsurgency government, thereby
strengthening the armed forces and economic elites who were
most implacably opposed to democracy. The war escalated,
and politics became more polarized as the Christian Democratics
were displaced by the far-Right Alianza Republicana Nacional
(ARENA). During this time, the death toll climbed to 75,000
(mainly civilians) in a country of 5 million, and over a million
refugees left El Salvador.
Beginning in the late 1980s, a complex series of factors
shifted Salvadoran politics from civil war to negotiated peace.
In January 1992, the government and the FMLN signed peace
accords brokered by the United Nations (UN), and in March
1994, the former guerrilla forces of the FMLN participated in
elections for the first time. The origins of this transition can only
be understood by analyzing closely a number of interrelated,
internal and external factors. 4 By the mid-1980s, the war had
escalated, but the combatant remained locked in a dynamic
stalemate (Karl, 1985). After the Central American Peace Plan
was signed in Esquipulas in 1987, regional pressures for a
negotiated solution increased. Low-intensity conflict strategists
in the US began to admit that it was becoming increasingly
unlikely that it would be possible to defeat the insurgents
militarily (Bacevich et al., 1988; Montgomery, 1990). The
November 1989 FMLN offensive in San Salvador, like the Tet
offensive of the Vietnam War, demonstrated the guerrillas'
capability despite massive government firepower and served
as a political turning point in the war (LeoGrande, 1992). In the
United States, both the shift in administrations (from Reagan to
Bush) and the decline of the Cold War marked an unwilling-
ness to continue high levels of military aid. When six Jesuit
priests were killed by US-trained forces in December 1989,
shortly after the November offensive, the US Congress reacted

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4 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

by suspending part of its aid. Meanwhile, the FMLN was also

beginning to reassess the political cost of carrying on a
protracted war (Villalobos, 1989a and 1989b; Bollinger, 1989),
a lesson driven home by the defeat of the Sandinistas at the
polls in Nicaragua in February 1990. Finally, the existing
electoral institutions began to hold out some promise of reality
(Baloyra, 1992), particularly after the 1991 legislative elections
when the Center-Left Convergencia Democratica (CD) coali-
tion won representation.
The transition from civil war to elections in El Salvador
raises several broader questions. The first issue to be explored
here is the extent to which such a negotiated transition can be
a real forward step toward democratization. Careful examina-
tion of two important factors — (a) the implementation of the
1992 Salvadoran peace accord and (b) the 1994 election — will
facilitate an understanding of the conditions required for a
negotiated transition to democracy. The second issue is
whether (and to what extent) external actors can play a positive
role in transitions from authoritarianism. Specifically, if the
timetable and motivations of external actors are shaped by their
own particular dynamics (in this case, decreasing US involve-
ment and a growing UN role during the transition), will they
contribute to democratization? Finally, the concluding section
will reflect on the implications of El Salvador's transition both
for resolution of the Central American conflicts as well as for
democratic consolidation in the region.

A LIME BIT PREGNANT WITH DEMOCRACY:

FROM PEACE ACCORDS TO ELECTIONS
N or d er t o eva lu a t e t h e 1 9 9 2 p ea c e a ccor ds a n d 1 9 9 4
I elections, it is always necessary to put these events in context
and clarify the relation between elections and democracy. From
1931 to 1979, the Salvadoran military ruled directly in an alliance
with agrarian elites that Baloyra (1983) aptly termed "reactionary
despotism". A democratic facade was preserved via parties and
elections, but there was no effective, legitimate link between
civil society and the state (Walter and Williams, 1993). The

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 STAHLER-SHOLK: EL SALVADOR'S NEGOTIATED TRANSITION 5

system essentially functioned as a marriage of convenience

between the military and oligarchy to exclude new contenders
for power and to block the possibility of agrarian reform or
other basic social change. This model came unraveled with the
coup of October 1979. When the resulting civilian-military junta
proved unable either to alter the existing power configuration
or to prevent wholesale repression, a radicalized coalition of
grassroots organizations and guerrilla forces — the Frente
Democratic° Revolucionario-Frente Farabundo Marti (FDR-
FMLN) — sought change outside the system.

Elections without Democracy in the 1980s

As Karl (1986) has noted, the elections held in the 1980s
during the civil war did not constitute the "founding" elections
of a new democratic regime because they occurred before there
was any fundamental consensus among the main political
actors and social forces. In some important ways, these
elections actually worked against democratization. The 1982
elections for a Constituent Assembly were characterized by
some as "demonstration elections" (Herman and Brodhead,
1984), orchestrated by the United States to sanitize the external
image of a repressive government. The repression effectively
prevented participation by the FRD-FMLN, which represented
a substantial segment of society. 5 Moreover, when the 1982
election led to an alliance of the far-Right ARENA and the
Partido de Conciliaciat Nacional(PCN), with its historical links
to the military, which threatened to name Roberto D'Aubuisson
as provisional president, the US exerted pressure a nd the
military intervened to appoint businessman Alvaro Magatia
(Magana, 1984). 6 Thus the 1982 election brought a president
appointed by the military and a constitution which gutted the
incipient agrarian reform while, at the same time, it served both
to justify increased foreign intervention and to deflect proposals
for a negotiated end to the civil war (Karl, 1986: 19 -25).
Similarly, the 1984 legislative, and 1985 presidential, elections
were marked by US support for the victorious PDC in order to
secure a major increase in US military involvement.

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6 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

Nevertheless, the 1984-85 elections were significant in

several respects. First, the Duarte government brought a
degree of liberalization, allowing labor and other popular
sectors to reconstruct an organized presence in civil society.
This upsurge in popular organizing from below — which was
well underway in the 1970s before it was driven underground
by repression — and the creation of new political spaces, were
important steps in a country without previous democratic
traditions (Lungo Ucles, 1984). Second, the elections registered
the substantial support that existed for reforms and negotia-
tions (Karl, 1985, 1988). Third, the elections established some
degree of consensus, at least between the Center-Right and the
Right, on constitutional and electoral rules of the political game
(Baloyra, 1992: 72; Cordova Macias, 1992: 21-42). Ultimately,
the Duarte government proved fatally dependent on US
support for a military solution, which undermined the possibility
of real reforms or negotiations. The PDC failed to bring
expected progress toward either peace or prosperity, and its
period in office was marked, instead, by substantial corruption
and internal fights that became public. ARENA adroitly ex-
ploited popular frustration with these failures, along with
nationalist resentment of US micromanagement, to win the
legislative elections in 1988, and the presidency (Alfredo
Cristiani, a wealthy coffee-grower with a moderate image) in
1989. Even these elections, however, indicated that the Right
had to pay some attention to the electoral way of doing politics
and to endorse negotiations, at least outwardly, in their
campaign. Nevertheless, this bid for legitimacy was under-
mined by a considerable degree of skepticism on the part of the
general public who gave expression to their feelings via
electoral abstention: almost 35% of the 1982 electorate had
dropped out by 1989 (Spence and Vickers, 1994: 9).

In short, although the 1980s elections failed to bring

democr acy, they did usher in a pr ocess of liberalized
authoritarianism and established the "institutionalization of
uncertainty" in elections if only for a limited part of the political
spectrum. As Przeworski (1986, 1988) has noted, democratiza-
tion is only one possible contingent outcome of such a process,

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 STAHLER-SHOLK: EL SALVADOR'S NEGOTIATED TRANSITION 7

and "extrication" from authoritarian rule is particularly difficult

in cases where the armed forces play a central role in defending
the old regime. If the process of democratization is seen as two
transitions (G. O'Donnell, 1992: 18), the 1992-94 period in El
Salvador might represent the first phase of transition from
authoritarianism to electoral democracy or polyarchy, which
does not preclude the possibility of authoritarian regression.
The second transition, if it were to occur, would involve the
consolidation of a democratic regime and, perhaps, the exten-
sion of democracy beyond the limited political sphere.
What would it take for the 1994 elections to represent a
break with the past and provide the founding basis for a
transition to democracy in El Salvador? Two kinds of criteria are
relevant. The first is an antecedent condition: whether, prior
to the elections, the major political and social actors had been
able to arrive at consensus on the rules of political competition,
conflict resolution, economic production, and the role of the
state and, in particular, the military (Karl, 1986: 9-10). In the
case of El Salvador, the test is whether such a consensus was
reached during the negotiation and implementation of the 1992
peace accords. While some uncertainty regarding the outcome
may be a necessary precondition for actors to agree to enter
into negotiations over a regime transition (Przeworski, 1986),
once those negotiations begin, the options and resources open
to the bargaining parties are shaped by the existing socioeco-
nomic structures and political institutions (Karl, 1990: 6-7). The
end of the war in El Salvador was tied to some basic agreement
on the scope, and form, of political contest. All such transitionsby-
agreement entail a certain ambivalence since, on the one hand,
a diversity of democratic actors must agree on procedures for
reining in the anti-democratic actors; on the other hand,
excessive prior accord among political elites may spill over
from the procedural to the substantive, thereby limiting the
prospects for real competition (G. O'Donnell, 1992: 22-3).

The second test is whether the organization and conduct

of the 1994 elections themselves advanced formation of a
democratic system of government. Definitions of democracy
vary from the minimalist one of emphasizing mainly the

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8 JOURNAL OF INTERAMERICAN STUDIES AND WORLD AFFAIRS

procedural aspects of multiparty competition, to a more

comprehensive definition that includes socioeconomic justice
for the majority. A mid-range assessment (Karl, 1990: 2) may be
more appropriate for El Salvador, however, due to its history
of formal electoral mechanisms that were vitiated by military
and paramilitary forces to the point that both representation
and accountability were limited. For example, one list of
relevant indicators suggested for evaluating Central American
elections (Booth, 1989: 16-21) includes: (1) the range of
political participation afforded by the election; (2) the breadth
of participation (as reflected in voter turnout); (3) the depth of
participation (actual influence of voters on important issues);
(4) whether the electoral environment/conduct allowed free
expression and equal rights to all participants; (5) whether the
election helped consolidate a stable regime under democratic
rules; and (6) whether it helped build a political culture of
support for democratic participation.
These last two criteria, in particular, are useful for
assessing El Salvador's prospects for what Guillermo O'Donnell
(1992) calls the "second transition" to a consolidated democ-
racy. Rather than conceiving of democracy as a two-part
variable, it may facilitate comparison to think of it as a layered
series of attributes above and beyond the holding of contested
elections, which may be combined in a number of different
ways to yield diverse types of democracy (Collier and Mahon,
1993; Schmitter and Karl, 1993). The fairness with which
elections are held and the degree and quality of civil participa-
tion would thus be relevant factors in helping to evaluate
electoral democracy. Protection of political rights, as well as
accountability of leaders to the citizens (implying subordination
of the military, and independence from external control), would
thus be key components of liberal democracy (Schmitter and
Karl, 1993: 45-6) . A collective commitment to giving a high priority
to socioeconomic equality might also be a distinguishing
characteristic of participatory democracy. By applying these
different kinds of criteria to the 1992 peace accords and to the
1994 elections, it is possible to find the appropriate adjectives
to attach to "democracy" in El Salvador.

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 STAHLER-SHOLK: EL SALVADOR'S NEGOTIATED TRANSITION 9

The 1992 Peace Accords

El Salvador's negotiated transition involved two overlap-
ping sets of issues; one over the basic rules of the political
system, and the other over the political projects of the opposing
parties. Because of the impossibility of achieving perfect
harmony and agreement in implementing all the points under
discussion, and until trust could be built, it was felt that external
actors, if mutually acceptable, might possibly play an important
role, similar to that of the King of Spain in the post-Franco
transition. The United Nations had sponsored the two years of
negotiations that led to the January 1992 peace accords and still
maintained an observer mission in El Salvador (ONUSAL) to
monitor both the accords and the March 1994 elections, which
were inseparable parts of the negotiated package.' Two
external factors shifted to favor agreement on new rules of the
political game: US commitment to a particular outcome de-
clined, while UN involvement in reinforcing civilian political
institutions expanded.
Aside from the election, which was supposed to include
guarantees that would allow full participation, the peace
accords covered five other major areas: (1) human rights, with
an international Truth Commission to investigate and redress
the abuses of the past 12 years; (2) demilitarization, including
a phased relinquishing of arms by the FMLN as well as reform
and reduction of the armed forces; (3) police reform, replac-
ing the old police and security apparatus with a new Civilian
National Police; (4) judicialreform, which would overhaul the
Supreme Court and establish a Human Rights Ombudsman
office, and (5) land reform and other economic and social
issues (UN, 1993a). Implementing the electoral mechanisms
and the rest of the peace accords turned out to be a tortuous,
conflict-ridden process (Vickers and Spence, 1992; Spence and
Vickers, 1994; Spence et al., 1994). A brief review of each of the
five major areas of the peace accords suggests that not only did
the opposing sides of the old conflict have different kinds of
democracy in mind (not surprisingly), but shortcomings in
fulfilling the accords also limited progress toward the narrower
goal of electoral democracy.

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