Politics of Honduras takes place in a framework of a multi-party system presidential representative democratic republic. The President of Honduras is both head of state and head of government. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in the National Congress of Honduras. The party system is dominated by the conservative National Party of Honduras, the Liberal Party of Honduras, and Liberty and Refoundation.
The Judiciary is independent of the executive and the legislature.
The 1981 Constitution of Honduras provides for a fairly strong executive in some ways, but many powers conceded to the executive elsewhere are designated duties of the unicameral National Congress. A judiciary is appointed by the National Congress.
That constitution delineates mechanisms for amending it, but it also declares eight articles immutable and unalterable and not subject to change, which include a guarantee of a republican form of government, and an explicit prohibition against presidential candidacy of anyone who has been president previously at any time or for any reason. The National Party unconstitutionally amended the latter prior to the 2017 elections, enabling the President to be re-elected for the position.
The constitution also provides for an independent organ to supervise and implement elections, the Superior Electoral Tribunal. Another organ similarly independent of the three main branches of government a Special Court for Resolution of Conflicts Between Branches of Government.
Structure
Executive branch
|President |Nasry Asfura |National Party of Honduras |27 January 2026 |} The president is both the chief of state and head of government and is elected by popular vote for a four-year term with no possibility of re-election. In the 2017 election, however, President Juan Orlando Hernández was reelected despite national protest and dispute over ballots, after The Supreme court voided a single-term limit for the country's presidency in 2015. In the 2021 election, the former first lady Xiomara Castro, leftist presidential candidate of opposition Liberty and Refoundation Party, won 53% of the votes in the presidential election to become the first female president of Honduras.
Legislative branch The National Congress of Honduras (Congreso Nacional) has 128 members (diputados), elected for a four-year term by proportional representation; congressional seats are assigned the parties' candidates on a departmental basis in proportion to the number of votes each party receives.
Judicial branch The judiciary includes a Supreme Court of Justice - the Supreme Court of Honduras, courts of appeal, and several courts of original jurisdiction – such as labor, tax, and criminal courts. The judges of the Supreme Court of Justice or (Corte Suprema de Justicia), are elected for seven-year terms by the National Congress.Honduras Judiciary. Country Studies
Administrative divisions For administrative purposes, Honduras is divided into 18 departments, with departmental and municipal officials selected for four-year terms.
Political parties
Honduras has eight political parties with representatives in the National Congress:
National Party of Honduras (Partido Nacional de Honduras, PNH), founded 1918. Dominated Honduran politics from 1933 to 1957. Liberty and Refoundation (Libertad y Refundación, LIBRE), founded 2011 by a coalition of leftist organizations opposed to the 2009 coup. Liberal Party of Honduras (Partido Liberal de Honduras, PLH), founded 1891. Innovation and Unity Party (Partido Innovación Nacional y Social Demócrata, PINU-SD), moderate leftist, social democratic, founded 1970. Honduran Patriotic Alliance (Alianza Patriótica Hondureña) founded in 2017. Democratic Unification Party (Partido Unificación Democrática, UD or PUD), founded in 1992 at the end of the Cold War when formerly clandestine leftist political parties were permitted to function openly. Four merged to form the PUD. Christian Democratic Party of Honduras (Partido Demócrata Cristiano, DC), founded 1968. Anti-Corruption Party (Partido Anticorrupción, PAC), founded in 2012.
History Since about 1920 Honduras has had essentially a two-party system, with the Liberal Party and the National Party dominating electoral politics. The early 1980s were a relatively peaceful period compared to other countries in Central America buffeted by left-wing guerrillas. The Honduran government provided bases for U.S. backed counter-revolutionary armies operating in Nicaragua.
Between 1981 and 1984, several forced disappearances were carried out by the military, as proved before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.Velásquez Rodríguez Case , Judgment of July 29, 1988, Inter-Am Ct. H.R. (Ser. C) No. 4 (1988) and in the Report of the National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras. In 1984, armed-forces chief General Gustavo Alvarez was deposed amid anti-US demonstrations in the capital, Tegucigalpa; this marked a decrease in counter-revolutionary activity, and the government continued to assist the United States' anti-Sandinista activities in Nicaragua in return for economic aid.
In 1986, the Liberal Party's José Azcona del Hoyo was elected president. Allegations of human rights abuses, and summary executions by police—especially of street gangs—have diminished steadily in recent years, while political violence has been a constant.
Rafael Callejas became president in 1990 and introduced neo-liberal economic reforms and austerity measures. He is credited with a major push to improve the country's transportation infrastructure. He implemented a policy of requiring cabinet member nominees to first pass appropriate examinations, unique among politicians anywhere.
In 1993, the Liberal Party's Carlos Reina was elected president, promising to reform the judicial system and limit the power of the armed forces. In April 1995 compulsory military service was abolished. The Liberal Party's Carlos Roberto Flores Facussé was elected in 1997, also promising to restructure the armed forces; in 1999 the armed forces were brought under civilian control.
In 2001, Ricardo Maduro was elected president on a platform that promised to stop rampant inflation afflicting the nation, and to put a stop to the brutal trademark violence of street gangs. At the time, the abuse of child-protection laws by gangs recruiting minors, and aggressive recruitment of members under threat of violence, lent broad popular support for Maduro's enlistment of the armed forces for a greater role in fighting crime during this time, as the police were seen as overwhelmed.
Gang violence A major political issue in Honduras since about 1990 has been the high level of violent crime associated with the maras (Spanish for gangs, predominantly of young people), and drug trafficking organizations involved in the transport of cocaine from South America to the United States. Although gangs existed in Tegucigalpa in the 1980s, the phenomenon exploded around 1990. The range of criminal activities that street gangs carry out is broad, from kidnapping and human trafficking to drug, auto and weapons smuggling, as well as domestic extortion. A 2006 estimate by the FBI and Honduran National Security Office put the number of gang members in Honduras at 36,000.
Gang membership is partly attributable to population movement between Honduras and the United States. During the 1980s, many Hondurans fled to the US to avoid civil war and strife, and emigration continued for economic reasons after that. Other than civil war, high rates of poverty and unemployment and lack of education make at-risk youth more vulnerable to gangs. In Honduras, close to 30% of the population is aged 15–24.
Immigrant children who formed or joined urban gangs in cities such as Los Angeles began to have an impact in Honduras around 1990 because gang members completing prison sentences were deported. Deportees brought the two main gangs in Honduras, MS-13 and the 18th Street gang.USAID, Central America and Mexico Gang Assessment, Annex 3: Honduras Profile , 2006; especially page 5. In 2004, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's Office of Immigration and Enforcement reported that Honduras received 2,345 total criminal deportations. However, it is unclear how many were gang-affiliated.
Almost a third of Hondurans feel a sense of insecurity related to crime. The report listed as causes and risk factors, "Lack of opportunities and alternatives for youth and adolescents, family breakdown, movement of Hondurans to and from the United States, and abuse of drugs and alcohol, and presence of weapons".
The report adds however, that the "overwhelming attention given to gang violence by the media and the government" is partly responsible. Gang members often compete to see which crime receives the most coverage. It has been recently contended though that the media tends to exaggerate the gang problem, thus making Hondurans believe their communities less secure than they really are, because of the extreme violence that accompanies the crimes perpetrated by these gangs. Another reason for the attention is that they most affect the lower-income population disproportionately, and almost all areas of public activities were affected.
The murder rate in 1999 was 154 murders per 100,000; around 2005 this had fallen to 49 per 100,000. (The death rate from all causes is roughly 1000 per 100,000 population.)1000 per 100,000 population is a very rough estimate based on 1.2% annual population growth and a life expectancy of 70 years. Although street gangs do play a significant role in this high rate, organized crime, drug trafficking and social violence are other factors that contribute as well. The local police have been suspected in extrajudicial killings of street children as a form of social cleansing, to combat the growing gang numbers. The USAID quote and murder rate are from USAID, Honduras Profile, op cit. Most of the crime in Honduras takes place in the big cities of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. A survey by Mitchell A. Seligson in 2004 found that 18% of the population thought public security and violence – delinquency, crime, violence, drug trafficking, and gangs – were the most serious problem facing the country.Seligson survey cited in USAID, Honduras Profile, op cit.
Honduras has been not only a transit point for cocaine running between Colombia and the United States, a pattern broken substantially after the arrest and exile of the ex-president Mel Zelaya, but also has an internal market, creating all sorts of inner-city problems. Gangs sell crack, commit other crimes, and hire themselves out to organised drug smugglers. Those engaged in international trafficking are better resourced than the state authorities combating them. Although gang members have been arrested for selling drugs at the street level, it is still unclear how much interaction they have with the larger drug cartels and their operations within Honduras.
Some would use this argument to justify increasing US military aid to Honduras to help fight the organised drug gangs, while others claim that Honduras would be better off legalizing drugs, thus avoiding military solutions to Honduran security problems. A recent form of U.S. aid that addresses the gang problem was the creation of the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), originally seen as a part of the U.S.- Mexico Mérida Initiative. In 2010 the U.S. Congress separated funding for Central America totaling $83 million. Although some of the aid came in the form of military hardware, some components focused on strengthening the receiving country's judicial system.