Nationalization of Parties and Party Systems in Latin America: Concept, Measurement and Recent Development in the Region (original) (raw)

"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."