Donoso and Gómez-Bruera. Governability strategies of the ‘moderate’ left in Latin America. XXXII LASA Conference, 21-24 May 2014, Chicago, USA (original) (raw)
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Party adaptation and change and the crisis of democracy
Party Politics, 2014
The argument of this dissertation is that instances of foreign policy change can be best understood as interactions between ongoing dynamics of important aspects of domestic party systems and changes in a state's normative and material international environment. I identify three types of dynamics of party systems: different patterns of coalition and opposition, different patterns of expression of social cleavages through parties, and redefinitions of the meaning attached to the main axis of competition. These dynamics provide partisan actors with the ideational resources to make sense of changes in the international system, contribute to the creation of new (domestic and foreign) policy preferences and bring about political incentives for the promotion of new foreign policies. The pace, content and fields of change are determined by the specific aspects of a party system undergoing change. Using insights from party systems theory and political sociology, the dissertation promotes the idea that the contestation of foreign policy, the engagement of domestic political actors with developments in the international system, and ultimately foreign policy change, all take place within a thick social and institutional structure that prescribes interests and delineates the terms of debate. In this way, this dissertation introduces in the field of International Relations (IR) and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) a view of domestic politics that is made up of constrained but enabled political agents, and social structures that impose continuity while containing opportunities for effecting political change. This is a significant departure from existing works on political parties and foreign policy that usually focus on the partisan effect in government or see parties only as carriers of ideologies or societal preferences. This dissertation applies its theoretical framework to three deep historical casestudies (Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik, the decision of Canada to enter a Free Trade Agreement with the USA, and Greece's decision to allow Turkey to acquire the status of an EU candidate-member) and four shorter cases in the shape of a plausibility probe. Using the method of structured-focused comparison, the research shows how, in varying historical, social, institutional and international contexts, foreign policy change was brought about by partisan actors who were constituted by domestic social and institutional structures, but who still found opportunities to engage with these structures and promote their own version of change in accordance with the systemically defined interests of their political parties. The dissertation concludes with a discussion of the theoretical and meta-theoretical implications of the comparative research, focusing especially on the importance of sociological approaches like the agency/structure debate in FPA and the need to 'give teeth' to the constructivist project in IR by applying its premises to real-world problems and cases, and by opening up the discipline to insights from other literatures. By taking comparative party politics literature seriously, this dissertation reveals the link between this conceptualization of domestic politics and debates in IR and FPA on the interplay of agents and structures, as well as the possibility of change within pertinent social and institutional arrangements.
2015
espanolHay cuatro metodos usados a menudo para estudiar los posicionamientos de los partidos politicos sobre los clivajes prominentes en los sistemas de partidos: encuestas de expertos, analisis del contenido de los pronunciamientos partidarios, analisis de los medios masivos de comunicacion y encuestas de opinion del electorado. La mayoria de la literatura que explora la relacion entre partidos politicos y dichos clivajes tiene dos deficiencias: (1) trata a los partidos como unidades cohesivas, y (2) mientras la combina- cion de politicas adoptadas por un partido es considerado importante, casi nadie considera como han de ser comunicadas a los votantes. Ambos asuntos son importantes: si los politicos de un partido permanecen divididos sobre un tema, los partidos tendran dificultad para ponerse de acuerdo en la posicion que deben tomar y no podran comunicar efectivamente sus ideas al publico. Por eso uno debe examinar los discursos de coordinacion y los discursos comunicativos de lo...
Party Membership in Latin American Political Parties: What is the Role of the Militantes?
Contrary to the situation in Europe, the research of political parties’ internal structure in Latin America has been rather limited. Moreover, comparative study of party membership is virtually nonexistent (Levitsky 2001; Wills-Otero 2009; for some exceptions, see Alcántara Sáez and Freidenberg 2003; Webb and White 2007; Alenda 2011; Ponce 2013; and Combes 2011; Muñoz Armenta and Pulido Gómez 2010 for case studies on Mexico). The goal of this paper is to contribute to fill the gap that evidences this area of study of party politics from the perspective of party membership. To achieve this goal, I examine the statutes of the principal political parties in Latin America and analyse the role given to the party members in approximately 60 political parties in the region. I organize this information according to three dimensions: entry requirements, members’ rights and members’ duties (in formal terms). First, I explore the conditions that the persons interested to become party members have to accomplish, focusing on whether there is any special condition. Second, I look at the role party members have with respect to the internal democracy, i.e., candidate selection and programme formulation, and if there is any condition of membership seniority. Third, I analyse the extent to what party are obliged to pay membership dues. I argue that these aspect are rather homogenous among the Latin American countries and cannot explain the differences in party membership levels. I posit some possible hypothesis and claim that these difference are due to a specific combination of historical, institutional and party-centred variables. This paper constitutes the first part of a larger project which will be complemented with an expert survey on party strategies regarding the role and influence of party members (second part) and with a field work consisting interviewing both party elites to contrast the official membership data and of interviews to grassroots party members (in particular about its motivations and its ideological positions) from various political parties-case studies selected based on the first and second part of the project.
[2011] Uprooted but Stable: Chilean Parties and the Concept of Party System Institutionalization
Latin American Politics and Society 53 (2): 1-28, 2011
Mainwaring and Scully’s concept of party system institutionalization (PSI) has greatly influenced the literature on parties and party systems. This article contributes to the “revisionist” literature on PSI by exploring the recent evolution of the concept’s four dimensions in Chile. It finds that the Chilean party system is not homogenously institutionalized (as conventionally argued) but is simultaneously frozen at the elite level and increasingly disconnected from civil society. In this regard, it approaches some recent descriptions of the Brazilian party system, a prototypical example of an “inchoate” party system that has gained stability over time without developing roots in society. This article argues that the current operationalization of the concept of PSI is problematic. Not only should all four dimensions of the concept be simultaneously measured, probably through multiple indicators for each one, but their trends across time and space should also be better integrated into the concept’s theoretical structure.
Uprooted but Stable: Chilean Parties and the Concept of Party System Institutionalization
Latin American Politics and Society, 2011
Mainwaring and Scully's concept of party system institutionalization (PSI) has greatly influenced the literature on parties and party systems. This article contributes to the "revisionist" literature on PSI by exploring the recent evolution of the concept's four dimensions in Chile. It finds that the Chilean party system is not homogenously institutionalized (as conventionally argued) but is simultaneously frozen at the elite level and increasingly disconnected from civil society. In this regard, it approaches some recent descriptions of the Brazilian party system, a prototypical example of an "inchoate" party system that has gained stability over time without developing roots in society. This article argues that the current operationalization of the concept of PSI is problematic. Not only should all four dimensions of the concept be simultaneously measured, probably through multiple indicators for each one, but their trends across time and space should also be better integrated into the concept's theoretical structure. L A TIN AMERICAN POLITICS AND SOCIETY 53: 2
Revue française de science politique (English), 2017
This article examines two “classics” of political science: LaPalombara & Weiner (eds), Political Parties and Political Development, 1966; Lipset & Rokkan (eds), Party Systems and Vote Alignments, 1967. Combining a content analysis and a sociological study of the interactions between their authors, it shows that their various theoretical models and contradictions can be explained by a shared commitment to the paradigms of the “normal science” of their time: systemic functionalism and behavioralism. This community of thought is nourished by a common membership of the same networks, which in turn reinforces these paradigms by applying them to the study of a canonical object: political parties.
Winning Elections Versus Governing. A Two-Tier Approach to Party Adaptation in Argentina (1983–2003)
2005
Party adaptation is the response of party organization to environmental change. Environmental change may challenge either party success or party survival or both. However, most of the literature fails to distinguish properly between success and survival, taking the latter for granted. This paper contends that the reasons underlying such inadequate approach are the scarcity of broader cross-area comparison, as there is a wild contrast between those regions where lack of success does not usually threat party survival (e.g. Europe) and those where lack of success frequently entails either extinction or irrelevance (e.g. Latin America). Hence, the paper develops a two-tier approach to party adaptation that distinguishes the capacity to adjust to electoral challenges from the capacity to adjust to government challenges. The approach is then applied to the two largest Argentine parties, the Peronists and the Radicals, in order to test the implications of their heterogeneous capacity for winning office and ruling the country.