After decades of authoritarianism and a twelve-year civil war ended by a negotiated peace agreement in 1992, El Salvador is a markedly different country. Despite important changes, however, public institutions have remained largely unresponsive, acute social exclusion persists and violent crime has soared. Rather than the possibly inevitable by-products of a post-conflict situation, these and other developments are the consequences of a regression from an incipient electoral democracy to electoral authoritarianism. The elite-controlled Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (ARENA) party had more to gain from the preservation of the status quo than from democratic changes and only accepted a politically inclusive system to restore the oligarchy's dominant position through electoral politics. Uncommitted to democratic consolidation, successive ARENA administrations maintained an institutional façade of democracy to reproduce authoritarian governance and defend elite interests.
