SANTIAGO, Chile -- When democracy returned to Chile nearly two decades ago after the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, rivals on the political left and center realized they needed to work together to make sure the bad old days of political polarization didn't return.

That's when four parties formed what's become the main political force here over the past 18 years, the Concertación coalition, which has given the citizens of this nation of 16.3 million the political stability and consensus it desperately needed.

The coalition appears to be falling apart now, however, more than halfway through its fourth straight government. The common wisdom is that the administration of President Michelle Bachelet could be the last one for some time.

A poll by the nonprofit Public Studies Center released a couple weeks ago showed businessman Sebastian Piñera, the presumptive presidential candidate of the conservative Alliance for Chile coalition, handily beating any of the Concertación's four main candidates in next year's presidential elections.

Former President Ricardo Lagos, whom Bachelet succeeded, came closest to Piñera, receiving 36 percent of the support to Piñera's 45 percent in a two-person contest.

The poll was another sign of the coalition's demise, with fierce bickering among Concertación's parties leading even its leaders to admit that next year's elections will be their toughest yet.

If the predictions come true, the political right could govern Chile for the first time since Pinochet.

''We're in a difficult period,'' said Sen. Hosain Sabag of the centrist Christian Democrat party, which belongs to the ruling coalition. ``We have less unity than we did just two years ago. And after nearly 20 years, we're talking more about points that divide us than unify us.''

Leftist members of the coalition delivered an even bleaker diagnosis while criticizing the moderate, market-friendly policies that its governments have followed. The other three parties in the coalition are the Socialists, the Party for Democracy and the Radical Social Democrat Party, all of them left-leaning.

''We are very close to losing the elections,'' said Sen. Alejandro Navarro of Bachelet's and Lagos' Socialist Party. ``The biggest critics are in the Concertación, but the leaders don't want to hear about it.''

The coalition's biggest challenge has been finding a purpose in a post-Pinochet, democratic Chile that can keep it united, political analyst Carlos Huneeus said. The dissolution, in fact, already has begun, with the coalition planning to run two slates of candidates in October's municipal elections.

The coalition first formed in 1988 to urge a ''no'' vote on a nationwide plebiscite deciding whether Pinochet should stay in power for another eight years.

Pinochet lost that vote, and the first Concertación government, of President Patricio Aylwin, came into power two years later. Aylwin faced the tough task of overseeing the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule while ensuring that economic growth continued.

By that measure, the coalition has succeeded. Chile claims one of Latin America's healthiest democracies, and its economy has grown by about 5 percent a year ever since.

In fact, the coalition may be a victim of its own success. The waning influence of Pinochet took some of the fight out of it, and the former dictator's death in December 2006 may have been the beginning of the end, Huneeus said.

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