PERSIST OR FAIL: CAN THE BROAD FRONT FOR PEACE, DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL JUSTICE SURVIVE TO BECOME A VIABLE POLITICAL PROJECT FOR THE COLOMBIAN LEFT?

Abstract: The Broad Front for Peace, Democracy and Social Justice is a Colombian coalition party formed by an array of left-wing social and political movements. It is characterized by an agenda consisting of increased citizen participation and the promotion of the Colombian peace process. The fledgling party has announced its plans to partake in the local elections scheduled for late 2015, with the intent of accruing support in advance of the upcoming presidential ballot. However, similar wide-ranging leftist political projects have traditionally struggled to consolidate themselves on the Colombian political scene. Thus, in order to achieve the comprehensive political and social changes it advocates, the Broad Front has to focus on long-term persistence. This study proposes a theoretical framework measuring social movement-based parties’ potential for persistence. The framework consists of three variables. Firstly, parties concerned with persistence have to be able to offer a participative linkage that existing parties fail to provide. Secondly, they have to exercise this linkage by building bottom-up party structures and maintaining horizontal and democratic internal organization. Finally, they have to develop a leadership of an ideological/charismatic nature, favoring constituency representation over electoral competition. Simultaneous adoption of all three cascading variables is likely to improve the capacity of a new social movement-based party to persist long-term. According to the analysis, the coalition party satisfies all three conditions described by the variables in the framework for persistence. Therefore, the conclusion is that the Broad Front for Peace, Democracy and Social Justice has the potential to persist as a political project.