Politics of El Salvador
Politics of El Salvador takes place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of El Salvador is both head of state and head of government, and of an executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and the Legislative Assembly. The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
El Salvador has a history of political instability, coups and political violence. After the end of the 1979–1992 Salvadoran Civil War, El Salvador had a sustained period of stable albeit fragile democracy. However, under Nayib Bukele's tenure as president, El Salvador has undergone democratic backsliding. El Salvador was ranked 5th least electoral democratic country in Latin America and the Caribbean according to V-Dem Democracy indices in 2023 with a score of 0.378 out of 1.
Political culture
El Salvador has a multi-party system. Three political parties Nuevas Ideas, the Nationalist Republican Alliance and the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front have tended to dominate elections since the end of the civil war. ARENA candidates won four consecutive presidential elections until the election of Mauricio Funes of the FMLN in March 2009. In 2014, he was followed by another FMLN president, Salvador Sánchez Cerén.The [2019 Salvadoran presidential system|presidential election|2019 election] was won by Nayib Bukele as the candidate of the center-right Grand Alliance for National Unity party. In February 2021, El Salvador's legislative election was an important breakthrough. The new party, founded by President Bukele, Nuevas Ideas, won around two-thirds of votes with its allies. His party won a supermajority of 56 seats in the 84-seat legislature. Bukele became the country's most powerful leader in three decades.
On 4 February 2024, President Nayib Bukele, won re-election with 84% of the vote in the presidential election. His party Nuevas Ideas won 58 of the El Salvador parliament's 60 seats.
Before the Bukele era, the departments of the central region, especially the capital and the coastal regions, known as departamentos rojos, or red departments, were mostly left-wing while the departamentos azules, or blue departments, in the east, western and highland regions were generally conservative.
Legislative branch
Salvadorans also elect a single-chamber, unicameral national legislature, the Legislative Assembly of El Salvador, of 60 members elected by open-list proportional representation for three-year terms, with the possibility of immediate re-election.Judicial branch
The Judiciary, headed by the Supreme Court, is composed of 15 judges, one of them being elected as President of the Judiciary.Foreign relations
El Salvador is a member of the United Nations and several of its specialized agencies, the Organization of American States, the Central American Common Market, the Central American Parliament, and the Central American Integration System. It actively participates in the Central American Security Commission, which seeks to promote regional arms control.El Salvador also is a member of the World Trade Organization and is pursuing regional free trade agreements. An active participant in the Summit of the Americas process, El Salvador chairs a working group on market access under the Free Trade Area of the Americas initiative.