Resumen en ingles

study arises from observing the small number of investigations on the political system, local elections and the popular election of mayors in the municipality of Ibagué. The research makes an approach to the application of the traditional theory of parties, electoral systems and party systems to the historical context of the last five popular mayoral elections in the new millennium (2000 – 2019), creating a general overview of political reality of the municipality of Ibagué. Starting from the analysis of electoral results, formation of alliances and interviews with political leaders, as well as taking into account variables such as electoral support for a proposal and the phenomenon of a voting tendency in the historical course towards a party in specific (predominant party), it is established that politics in the municipality of Ibagué responds to personalist (gamonales), factional, circumstantial dynamics and without firm ideologies regarding its political purposes, but that despite all its shortcomings, it has generated a form own stability in the system. The political parties in the municipality present a low level of institutionalization, the electoral system shows symptoms of delegitimization due to corruption in its execution and the party system is diffuse, reducing itself to a new two-party system that does not fit into the theory. The application of traditional theory is difficult because it is designed and created for other contexts that are not very comparable with the peculiarities of local politics in the municipality of Ibagué, which is made up of corrupt, clientelist political groups with the capacity to adapt to new laws that do not affect its political deployment. Keywords: Popular election of mayors, political parties, factions, movements, electoral system, party system.