ABSTRACT
Panama long has possessed one of Latin America's most fragmented and least institutionalized multiparty systems. Traditionally, Panamanian political parties have been nonprogrammatic, personalist groups highly prone to faction. By the mid-1920s, the Conservatives had disappeared almost entirely from Panamanian politics. The Arias brothers were middle-class mestizos from rural Panama who had managed to obtain professional degrees abroad. When, in the 1930s, the United States ceased to intervene militarily in Panamanian politics, the racially mixed and hitherto insignificant national police forces had assumed new importance. Since the 1968 coup, Panama has been ruled by the Panamanian Defense Forces. Before 1968 Panamanian elections were lively, intense, and sometimes violent affairs. Arnulfo Arias formed an electoral coalition made up of his new party and several Liberal factions, including that of the powerful Chiari family, and in 1940 captured the presidency.
