El sistema de partidos uruguayo durante la dictadura

Una comparación con el caso argentino

Abstract

This article treats the history of the most important Uruguayan political parties during the period between the months just before the coup of 1973 and the political thaw initiated in 1979. The central idea of the paper is an hypothesis regarding the historical centrality of political parties in the Uru¬guayan political system. The study presented takes account of how and why his centrality is not transferred during this period despite the serious political crisis. The comparison with the Argentinian case is made in order to emphasize the differences, in moments when party activity is suppressed, between a party centered system like the Uruguayan one and the Argentinian system which, although founded in a society with the same roots and demonstrable similarities to the Uruguayan one, does not possess this characteristic .