The nature of the country's elite-dominated political system and the personalistic rule of presidents drawn from either the oligarchy or the military accounted for the relatively short life span of most of these documents.
The latter document, although it never formally came into force, owing to the overthrow of Zaldivar by Francisco Menendez, was nonetheless an influential piece of work, primarily because it formed the basis for the constitution of 1886, the most durable in Salvadoran history.
This constitutional litmus test of executive action was, at least in theory, a significant step toward an institutionalized governmental system and away from the arbitrary imposition of power by self-serving caudillos.
The 1939 constitution that filled the wartime gap was designed by President Maximiliano Hernández Martínez to ensure his uninterrupted rule; it increased the presidential term from four to six years.
Martinez's effort to extend his rule still further by inserting a provision for the one-time legislative election of the president was one of several grievances fueling the public unrest that drove him from office in 1944.
These changes reflected the political uncertainty that prevailed in El Salvador between the termination of Martinez's long tenure as president and the advent of the military-led Revolution of 1948.