The electoral performance of Latin American traditional parties, 1978–2006: Does the internal structure matter (original) (raw)
Related papers
2009
The study of party systems and political parties is one of the largest subfields in political science. Classic studies in advanced democracies focused primarily on party systems and developed theories about the causes and consequences of different types of systems. In recent years, new academic work begun to differentiate parties within systems by understanding their organizational structure, their internal dynamics, the different ways in which they interact with their constituencies, and the strategies that they use to attract voters. Studies show that parties within the same system behave and react differently given their internal conditions. This article reviews three scholarly books that deal with this issue. The works analyze the internal dynamics of Latin American political parties and their capacity to respond and adapt their structures when environmental challenges take place.
Party Systems in Latin America
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2020
Since the beginning of the third wave of democratization in the late 1970s, Latin American party systems have confronted several challenges, and they have frequently been transformed. There have been various types of changes. While some systems collapsed in the 1990s (e.g., Venezuela and Peru), others realigned (Colombia, Chile, and Uruguay), or expanded (Argentina and Mexico), or were able to become consolidated and ensure their stability over time (e.g., Brazil). What factors explain the transformations in party systems during the past three decades, and how can Latin American party systems be classified according to their attributes? In trying to answer these questions, scholars of Latin America have undertaken studies that are both theoretically and empirically rich. Their work has increased our knowledge of the party systems and representative democracies in the region. Different factors have been highlighted in order to explain the changes these systems have undergone since the third wave of democratization. Some works emphasize the importance of institutional reforms introduced by politicians or by constitutional assemblies. The questions they address are the following: What political reforms have been introduced into Latin American political systems, and what effects have they had on the party systems in different countries? The researchers do not limit their attention to reforms of electoral systems. For example, some of them also study decentralization processes and their effects on party systems. From a different perspective, other authors focus on changes in electoral preferences and their effects on the configuration of political power, exploring how regional economic, political, and social changes have affected voter preferences and the political configuration of party systems. Still others consider the crises of democratic representation in these countries, underlining the decline in the programmatic character of parties as an explanatory variable for the crises and noting that the level of institutionalization of a party system declines when parties abandon this distinctive feature and become clientelistic or personalistic instead. On the other hand, in order to describe party systems and to observe the changes they have undergone, academics have proposed a set of concepts and measurements that make it possible to identify their levels of institutionalization (i.e., stability vs. volatility), nationalization, and programmatic structuration, among other aspects. The operationalization of these concepts has provided researchers with useful data for describing, comparing, and analyzing the party systems of the region transversely over time. Understanding the transformation and characteristics of Latin American party systems over time sheds light on both the progress democratic regimes have made and the setbacks they have suffered within specific countries and in the region at large. Keywords: Latin America, party systems, electoral reforms, voter realignment, democratic representation, fragmentation, institutionalization, volatility, nationalization, party system structuration, Latin American politics
'Break-In Parties' and Changing Patterns of Democracy in Latin America
Although Lijphart's typology of consensus and majoritarian democracy can be regarded as the most widely used tool to classify democratic regimes, it has been rarely applied to Latin America so far. We try to fill this gap by adapting Lijphart's typological framework to the Latin American context in the following way. In contrast to previous studies, we treat the type of democracy as an independent variable and include informal factors such as clientelism or informal employment in our assessment of democratic patterns. On this basis, we aim to answer the following questions. First, how did the patterns of democracy evolve in Latin America over the two decades between 1990 and 2010 and what kind of differences can be observed in the region? Second, what are the institutional determinants of the observed changes? We focus on the emergence of new parties because of their strong impact on the first dimension of Lijphart's typology. From our observations we draw the following tentative conclusions: If strong new parties established themselves in the party system but failed to gain the presidency, they pushed the system towards consensualism. Conversely, new parties that gained the presidency produced more majoritarian traits.
Electoral Laws, Parties, and Party Systems in Latin America
Annual Review of Political Science, 2007
■ Abstract With a focus on Latin America, this literature review considers the extent to which electoral systems affect different aspects of parties and party systems. We find that standard electoral system variables fail many empirical tests that try to tie them to any facet of parties or party systems. Still, methodological considerations regarding interactions with party strategies, party organization, and many contextual variables loom large, so we cannot reject the hypothesis that electoral systems are influential. Analyses, therefore, must go far beyond formal electoral rules generally or a simple focus on single aspects of electoral rules (such as the district magnitude) when trying to explain political behaviors.
Party Membership in Latin America. Party Strategies and the Role of Party Members
Contrary to the situation in Europe, comparative study of party membership in Latin America is virtually nonexistent. The goal of this essay is to fill this gap in the study of party politics and the internal organization of parties in the region. This essay examines the statutes of the principal political parties in Latin America and analyzes the role given to party members in fifty-one political parties in the region. This information is organized into three categories: entry requirements; members' rights; and members' duties (in formal terms). The essay argues that these aspects are rather homogenous among Latin American countries; unlike the situation in Europe, they cannot explain differences in party membership growth rates. The essay evaluates six alternative hypotheses, concluding that the varying levels of party membership in Latin American countries are the result of a combination of historical factors, candidate selection procedures, and party strategies.
A classification of Latin American political parties
1997
Dame. He is the author of Strong Parties and Lame Ducks: Presidential Partyarchy and Factionalism in Venezuela (Stanford University Press, 1994) and numerous articles on Venezuelan politics, Latin American political parties and democratic governance, and the measurement of democracy worldwide. His current research seeks to explain cleavages, fragmentation, and volatility in eleven twentiethcentury Latin American party systems.
Working Paper University of Hradec Králové, 2013
"The goal of this paper is to contribute to a burgeoning comparative literature about nationalization of party competition (political parties and party systems) clarifying its terminology and evaluating different indices of measurement of this phenomenon. Thus, the scholarly literature produced until now is revisited and the diverse conceptualizations of nationalization are examined. In this sense, nationalization in this work is understood as the homogeneity of electoral support across the territory. Then, four measures (Rose and Urwin 1975; Jones and Mainwaring 2003; Moenius and Kasuya 2004 and 2008; Lago and Montero 2010) are evaluated with respect to a battery of criteria they should comply with. Pros and cons of each index are stressed. Finally, recent development of the nationalization literature on Latin America is presented. This paper argues that there is a great confusion in the terminology used in the literature on nationalization and that even the term itself does not have one only meaning. The study concludes that a proper measure of nationalization should take into account four basic elements: party presence across the country, number of subnational units where it is measured, its magnitude and the size of the party. Though none of the indices is perfect, they offer useful information on electoral evolution of political parties and party systems. The revision of the literature dedicated to Latin American countries reveals that more case studies of long-term evolution of party systems and explication of its changes and party centred variables are necessary."