Upload
vuongdat
View
218
Download
0
Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
Democratization, Informal Institutions, and the Emergence of
Responsive Party Systems in Latin America
Simon Bornschier
University of St. Gallen and University of Zurich
Paper prepared for the workshop “Rule of Law, Informal Institutions and Democracy in
Latin America and Eastern Europe in Comparative Perspective”
ECPR General Conference
Reykjavik, August 25-27, 2011
2
Abstract
This paper’s point of departure is the assumption that the emergence a party system that is
responsive to the citizenry is an important determinant for successful democratization and
the establishment of the rule of law. Because many parties in Latin America and elsewhere
use clientelistic appeals to mobilize voters, they fail to adequately represent the policy
preferences of their electorate. In this paper, argue that programmatic party competition is
rooted in a specific historical interaction between the nature of the pre-democratic party
system at the end of the 19th century and political mobilization by progressive parties
between the 1930s and 1960s. I study this route in a comparative historical analysis of
democratization and party system formation in eleven countries. In order to make sense of
the failure of party systems to institutionalize in many Latin American countries, this
approach pays special attention to the deliberate attempts of political elites in restricting
competition and in deploying clientelistic appeals to prevent ideological conflicts from
materializing. The impact of historical party system formation on contemporary party
systems will then be assessed by drawing on data on party system institutionalization and
responsiveness after re-democratization in the 1980s.
3
Introduction
The first euphoria over the unprecedented diffusion of democratic rule around the world in
the “Third Wave” of democratization has given way to more gloomy assessments of the
prospects for the consolidation of democracy in many of these countries. Starting with
O’Donnell’s (1994) famous article on “delegative democracy”, the democratic quality of
many of the new regimes was questioned. This has resulted in a proliferation “democracies
with adjectives” or “defects” of democratic regimes that are used to characterize regimes
lying in the “grey zone” between democracy and authoritarianism (e.g., Collier and
Levitsky 1997, Diamond 2002, Merkel et al. 2003, 2006, Merkel 2004). In particular, this
literature testifies large problems regarding the rule of law, “horizontal” or inter-
institutional accountability, and in the responsiveness of party systems to voter
preferences.
This paper takes as its starting point the assumption that an important determinant for
the successful democratization is the emergence of a party system that is responsive to the
citizenry. Because many parties in Latin America and elsewhere use clientelistic appeals to
mobilize voters, they fail to represent the programmatic preferences of their electorate,
which would be one of democracy’s most central goals according to democratic theory. In
this paper, I present first results from a larger study that focuses on the conditions under
which conditions programmatic linkages come about. While recent developments in
countries such as Brazil and Mexico suggest that new parties that actively seek to
overcome clientelistic patterns of mobilization may actually be successful in the long run,
this paper focuses on a historical route of party system development that is capable of
explaining the prevalence of programmatic party competition after the most recent
transition to democracy in the region in the 1980s. I adopt a “Rokkanian” perspective that
4
analyzes critical junctures and historical legacies that set countries apart (Lipset and
Rokkan 1967, Rokkan 1999, Collier and Collier 2002 [1991]). By stressing the merits of
polarization for political representation and, consequently, the quality of democracy, my
approach differs from that of scholars which have pointed to political moderation as a key
for democratic survival (e.g., Collier and Collier 2002).
This paper posits two critical junctures that set party systems based on ideological
divisions and those based on clientelistic mobilization apart. The first is the type of elite
party system that emerged around the turn of the 19th to the 20th centuries, which has
important consequences for the representation of elite interests when the suffrage was
expanded later on. Only where conservative forces joined together in nationwide parties
were they able to defend their interests effectively in the electoral arena was open party
competition viable. This had important consequences for what I call the polarization phase,
when left-wing or progressive parties challenged the political establishment between the
early and the mid-20th century. In this phase, politics came to evolve around clearly
contrasting visions of state responsibility or market liberalism, as well as around the issue
of further democratization. Where conservative parties met the challenge of competing
openly with progressive forces, clientelism, if not ousted, was at least constricted or
complemented by programmatic bases of vote choice. In those contexts where elite
interests in the early democratization process were not safeguarded by political parties,
polarization was aborted by different means, such as bans on challenging parties, military
interventions, and the use of clientelistic resources to de-mobilize newly emerging social
groups. Consequently, these party systems are characterized by heavy reliance on
particularistic benefits and low levels of programmatic structuring.
5
Overview and a guide to the reader
The paper is structured as follows. The first section briefly discusses the role of parties in
democratization and reviews recent theorizing on party systems in new democracies.
Second, I sketch the theory involving the two critical junctures outlined above. The bulk of
the paper is then dedicated to the comparative historical analysis of eleven Latin American
countries. Due to the historical evidence necessary to substantiate the theoretical argument
presented, this is a very long paper. This is a guide on how to access the material
presented: I suggest first to read the two theoretical sections, as well as the introductions to
the analysis of the first and the second critical junctures on pages 18 and 26 to 29,
respectively. Figure 2 on page 29 presents a synthesis of the historical trajectories of the
eleven countries. Those not interested in the details of the specific cases, but rather in the
main thrust of the argument may read only the discussion of those countries they are
particularly interested in or of classifications that appear implausible to them. Section 5
then tests whether the predictions derived from the historical analysis explain party system
institutionalization and responsiveness in the 1980s and 1990s. While the focus of the
paper is thus on the early post-authoritarian party systems, I discuss some more recent
evolutions that may lead to a modification of the historically shaped patterns in the
conclusion. The conclusion also provides a summary of theoretical argument and of the
empirical results.
6
Party systems and democratization
As the actors linking citizens and the political system, parties play a central role in
guaranteeing democratic governance. In a path-breaking approach, Mainwaring and Scully
(1995) have argued that democratization entails not only the building of formal democratic
institutions, but also of party systems that represent the interests of voters in the political
process. Most importantly, these authors have reveal vast differences in party system
institutionalization, or, put differently, in the degree to which they constitute veritable
systems, in Sartori’s (1976) terms. Only when the basic patterns of opposition or conflict
are stable do party systems structure the expectations of political actors and introduce
predictability in politics. This, on the other hand, is considered a central prerequisite of
democratic accountability and of the congruence between citizens and their representatives
(Mainwaring and Scully 1995, Mair 1997, 2001, Tóka 1998, Mainwaring and Torcal
2006).
While the representative function of party systems as such makes them a key element of
democracy (Pitkin 1967, Dahl 1971, Powell 2000), a party system firmly rooted in society
may also be a remedy for other defects of new democracies. Early on, O’Donnell (1994)
deplored that institutions in many of the new Latin American democracies do not function
in the way conceived in their constitutions. In particular, he highlighted that whether
parliaments can fulfill their role of effectively checking the executive depends on the
strength and cohesion of political parties. More recently, Chavez (2003) has shown that the
prevalence of the rule of law depends on the historical fragmentation of economic power
and on the resulting “balanced dispersal of political power” (p. 423). A pluralistic party
system, in which governing parties face the threat of finding themselves in the opposition,
therefore favors the establishment of judicial autonomy. Likewise, Ríos-Figueroa and
7
Pozas-Loyo (2010) show that independent judicial institutions are less likely to be created
by constituent bodies dominated by a single political group than what they call multilateral
constitution-making processes.
Party systems, once institutionalized, seem to remain remarkably stable, and the path-
dependent nature of their evolution partially accounts for the continuing differences in the
quality of democracy across Latin America. In Europe, the conjuncture of large-scale
processes of social change and extensions of the suffrage resulted in the early emergence
of cross-local functional conflicts that displaced the clientelistic and local politics prevalent
before (Caramani 2004). Latin American trajectories have proven much more varied.
While some party systems, such as the Brazilian one, have emerged more or less from
scratch after every disruption of democratic rule, the party systems in Colombia, Uruguay
and Chile still carry the imprint of the conflicts prevalent in the early decades of the 20th
century, when democracy was first established (Dix 1989, González 1995, Scully 1995,
Coppedge 1998, Mainwaring 1999). In these cases, strong linkages between parties and
voters seem to have “frozen” party systems into place much like their European
counterparts. Mainwaring and Zoco (2007) have recently shown that lasting differences
between party systems result from specific historical sequences, highlighting that there is
nothing automatic in the stabilization of interparty competition over time. The degree to
which party systems have stable roots in society and become institutionalized thus seems
to be a crucial aspect of the more general path dependency of democratic trajectories.
A major shortcoming of the party system institutionalization approach is that the
indicators commonly used to measure the concept say little about whether parties build
voter loyalties by offering distinctive policy programs, or whether the stability of party-
voter linkages is due to the distribution of particularistic benefits. Here, the distinction
between programmatic, clientelistic, and charismatic linkages introduced by Kitschelt
8
(2000, Kitschelt and Wilkinson 2007) is useful. The party system institutionalization
literature assumes that stable party system result from parties “standing for something”
(Mainwaring and Scully 1995) in terms of differing policy options, and hence a
programmatic linkage, where goods are distributed according to universalistic criteria and
irrespective of whether an individual supported the party that distributes the benefit. To the
degree that parties control the clientelistic networks characteristic of Latin America’s non-
ideological party systems (Chalmers 1977), however, party system stability can also mean
that parties deliver in terms of the particularistic resources they promise to voters. While
the clientelistic linkage between parties and voters means that parties are accountable to
voters, they fail to be responsive to their policy preferences.
At an aggregate level, Kitschelt, Luna, and Zechmeister (2010: 294) show an
impressive relationship between the degree to which party systems are rooted in
programmatic lines of conflict, and various indicators measuring the rule of law, and levels
of corruption in Latin America. The recent re-invigoration of the linkage approach by
Kitschelt and his colleagues has thus provided valuable theoretical tools and some results
that testify the importance of programmatic linkages for the quality of democracy. Where
the observed differences between Latin American countries come from, and under which
conditions programmatic linkages are capable of ousting clientelism, remain open
questions, however. It is to this question that this paper seeks to make a contribution.
Because the parties of notables characteristic of pre-democratic elite party systems
usually employ clientelistic means to stay in power once the suffrage is extended, I take a
party system based on clientelistic, rather than programmatic linkages as a starting point
(c.f., Gunther & Diamond 2003: 175-7). To the degree that the established parties are able
to prevent new competitors from entering the system, clientelistic practices are likely to
remain unaltered. As Shefter (1977, 1993) and Geddes (1994) have argued and empirically
9
shown, in the absence of a universalistic state bureaucracy that precludes such practices – a
condition that generally does not apply in Latin America – established parties are able to
secure their position by distributing particularistic benefits. Hagopian’s (1996) case study
of Brazil reveals that clientelism is an instrument of long-established political elites to hold
on to their positions of power and privilege. Only “externally mobilized parties”, in
Shefter’s terminology, which do not have access to the ruling circles of power, push for
programmatic competition – because programs are all they have to offer. By the same
token, it can be hypothesized that once ideological party competition has been established
and parties appeal to voters by offering distinctive policy options, clientelistic promises
will no longer prove very successful. For voters that are sufficiently informed and are
offered clear programmatic options, selling their vote for a particularistic benefit is
unlikely to be an attractive option. Consequently, the initial emergence of a party system
that is responsive to the preferences of the citizenry emerges as a decisive moment in the
evolution of party systems.
Historical party system formation and polarization: Two critical junctures and
implications for linkage practices
The role of conflict in responsive party system formation
Two requisites are necessary for voters to develop firm attachments to parties that
represent their interests. First, in line with classical approaches to party system formation
(Sartori 1968, 1976) and the more recent study of party system institutionalization in Latin
America (Mainwaring and Scully 1995), the options represented by parties need to be
10
fairly stable in order to socialize voters into a given structure of conflict and to
subsequently give them guidance in their political decision-making processes. Individuals
with high levels of political interest may do without parties and can vote based on the
issues of the day. An institutionalized party system, on the other hand, gives those broad
segments of the electorate the possibility to take meaningful decisions for whom politics is
not their prime interest. From a cleavage perspective (Lipset and Rokkan 1967, Bartolini
and Mair 1990, Bornschier 2009), and building on social psychological theories of
collective identity formation (e.g., Coser 1956, Stryker 1980, 2000), the development of
the lasting political identities that underlie stable party systems requires political conflict,
as Sartori (1968) has suggested long ago. Consequently, a stable, responsive party system
will only emerge if parties present contrasting policy propositions. Put differently, a
responsive party system requires ideological polarization for its formation.
Once such a party system is in place, and given periodic re-emergence of policy-based
conflict in order for parties to retain voter loyalties based on these historical antagonisms,
party systems are likely to perpetuate themselves over long periods of time (Bornschier
2010: 53-63). At least the European experience testifies that ideological party systems tend
to remain stable over long historical periods, as new generations of voters are socialized
into the prevailing structure of conflicts; that is, they come to interpret politics in terms of
the basic dividing lines represented by the party system (Lipset and Rokkan 1967,
Bartolini and Mair 1990, Bornschier 2010: Ch. 3). In the Latin American context, the
durability of party systems in Chile and Uruguay suggests that party systems, once firmly
entrenched, can survive even protracted periods of military rule. On the other hand,
countries such as Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia did not see the institutionalization of a
cleavage-based party system in the first decades of the 20th century, and politics in these
contexts continued to be heavily stamped by clientelistic forms of mobilization after re-
democratization in the Third Wave of democracy.
11
Of course it may appear questionable to champion political polarization in contexts in
which the interests of the landed upper classes, and the availability of the military to act on
their behalf, makes the avoidance of polarization appear far more auspicious for the
survival of democracy. And indeed, in a view defended most articulately by Collier and
Collier (2002), the political moderation of the left, and a labor movement tied to the
political center has been key in making a more inclusive political regime acceptable for the
upper classes in the first decades of the 20th century in Latin America. In this view, it is the
avoidance of polarizing conflict that makes democracy viable. If we shift the focus from
democratic survival to the quality of democracy in the long term, however, a quite
different picture emerges. With hindsight, we know that the collusion of the major parties
in Colombia and Venezuela, and the emergence of a dominant party system in Mexico,
cases that represent success stories from Collier and Collier’s point of view, were not
propitious for the democracy in the long run. While these countries avoided a breakdown
of democracy in the 1960s and 1970s, the survival of popular rule came at the price of a
democracy of low intensity resulting from de-facto restricted competition, as I will argue
in more detail later on.
If we assume for a minute the importance of a responsive party system for the quality of
democracy, and if political polarization indeed helps to create tight links between voters
and parties that re-emerge even after authoritarian periods, then the central question
becomes under which conditions polarization contributes to making party systems
responsive. In this paper, I propose a model with two critical junctures, the combination of
which either results in a party system representative of the preferences of the citizenry, or
to a system in which particularistic clientelistic benefits are the dominant currency in
engendering political support. I suggest that the propitious path to a responsive party
system entails a parties that offered clearly contrasting policy propositions early in the 20th
century, but nonetheless survived long enough to build strong and enduring political
12
identities. Consequently, programmatic parties have re-emerged in most recent wave of
democratization in these contexts, while other countries had to begin more or less from
scratch, increasing the chances that competition is of a primarily clientelistic character.
Two critical junctures
Put simply, the model posits that the emergence of a responsive party system by the mid-
20th century required a strong parliamentary representation of the right in a first step, and
then a polarization of political space by left-wing or other progressive forces in a second
step. The basic theoretical model outlining the two critical junctures is presented in Figure
1. The starting point, inspired by Coppedge’s (1998) account, is the kind of party system
that emerged from the conflict between Conservative and Liberals after independence
(McDonald and Ruhl 1989, Di Tella 2004). This conflict results from a similar critical
juncture as occurred in Europe, which Lipset and Rokkan (1967, Rokkan 1999) refer to as
the “national revolution”. With conflicts centering on the prerogatives of the Church and
over political centralization, the antagonisms that emerged in much of Latin America after
independence were similar to those created by nation-building in the European context.
The second critical juncture, the polarization resulting from the rise of left-wing or
progressive forces, is similar to the “industrial revolution” in Europe in terms of the issues
it put on the agenda. The Latin American experience differs from the European one,
however, in that these conflicts became firmly institutionalized only in few cases. In some
countries, party systems proved unable to channel conflict, and consequently, politics was
dominated by military interventions. Still in others, political elites proved capable of
deploying informal institutions to avoid the crystallization of these conflicts. This
argument is now spelled out in more detail.
13
Figure 1: Two critical junctures and the resulting linkage types
Whether or not a competitive elite party system existed prior to mass politics represents the
first parting of the ways in Figure 1. In line with classical accounts of democratization
(Moore 1969, Dahl 1971), Coppedge (1998) emphasizes the effect of party competition on
elite political culture, as the acceptance of a liberal political regime entailing the right to
opposition becomes engrained in a pluralistic political culture. Consequently, elites are
more likely to accept new actors’ right to opposition when the suffrage is expanded. While
not denying the impact of political culture, I suggest that the central mechanism linking
early pluralism to later political outcomes is of a different kind. Drawing on Gibson (1996)
and Rueschemeyer et al. (1992), pluralistic elite party systems predating democratization
enhance the chances that conservative forces in society – above all, the upper classes – will
build national party organizations to defend their interests as the suffrage is expanded to
the middle classes. I follow Gibson (1996: 7) and others in defining conservative parties as
!"#$%&'()$*&+*+$%,&)%+-"$#./&0)1,&21.!#2$&3%$4%%.&5#3%)("+&(.6&71.+%)8($#8%
!"#$%&#'$%(%)$)&*%+%'*%*&,-&%)$.,"#)/%*&0.($#%)&#'&'.$#1'."#2%*&0.($-&)-)$%3&
!"#$%&'()$#%+&4%(9"*&#.+$#$-$#1.("#:%6&1)&)%/#1.(""*&6#8#6%6
4*%1"15#6."&01".(#2.$#1'&(%)7"$#'5&+(13&
%3%(5%'6%&1+&'%8&01"#$#6."&+1(6%)
;1"()#:($#1.&(31)$%6 ;1"()#:($#1.&(31)$%6&1)&%.6%6
<6%1"1/#2("&'1"()#:($#1.&4#$=&4%(9&')1$%2$#1.&10&%"#$%&#.$%)%+$+
9%)01')#:%&0.($-&)-)$%3;&%.("-&
0(15(.33.$#6&)$(76$7(#'5
;()$*&+*+$%,&.1$&)%+'1.+#8%>
2"#%.$%"#+,&'%)8(+#8%
;()$*&+*+$%,&.1$&)%+'1.+#8%>
2"#%.$%"#+,&'%)8(+#8%
?)%@-%.$&,#"#$()*&21-'+&(.6&(3+%.2%&10&21.+%)8($#8%&'()$*&#,'%6%&'()$*&+*+$%,&#.+$#$-$#1.("#:($#1.
;=(+%&3%01)%&,(++&'1"#$#2+&
A$-).&10&BCDEFGD&7DH>&%"#$%&
)%')%+%.$($#1.
;1"()#:($#1.&'=(+%&
AIBCJGKBCLGH
M%+-"$#./&'()$*&
+*+$%,&(.6&
')%61,#.(.$&
"#.9(/%&$*'%
M1-$%&B M1-$%&F M1-$%&J M1-$%&N
14
“...parties whose core constituencies are upper social and economic strata but that mobilize
multi-class electoral support in a common political project” (Middlebrook 2000: 3).
Occasionally, I refer to conservative parties’ core constituency as the pre-democratic elite
or the “oligarchy”, the latter term drawing on Collier and Collier (2002: 786-7), who use it
to denote primarily the landed elite and the elites in the mining or the extractive sector.1
As Remmer (1984: 222) concurs in pointing out that “If a single lesson is to be drawn
from the complex evidence concerning the introduction of competitive party politics in
[Argentina and Chile], it is that the consolidation of liberal democratic institutions depends
not upon their effectiveness in equalizing the distribution of political power, but upon their
acceptability to the propertied and the powerful”. As we shall see, the structural
interpretation is better than the cultural account in explaining why conservative forces that
were regionally divided frequently did not accept open competition despite a pluralistic
pre-democratic order. This first bifurcation in the model thus separates to types of cases.
The first type saw an early emergence of institutionalized elite party systems that in a later
phase helped to provide protection for the interests of pre-democratic elites. In the second
type, the party system preceding mass democracy failed to offer the protection of elite
interests due to a variety of reasons: either no pluralistic pre-democratic order had existed,
or elites were regionally divided due to divergent economic bases, or they were simply too
weak to withstand progressive forces, and a revolution did away with the elite party
system.
The second critical juncture occurs when externally mobilized parties (new political
actors, that is) claim to represent the hitherto marginalized interests of new social groups
such as the middle classes and the popular sector. Left-wing or progressive parties
appeared throughout Latin America in the first decades of the 20th century, but the impact 1 In some countries at least, these groups eventually become decoupled from their initial economic base and came to form an elite that sought to maintain its privileged political position, rather than defending specific economic interests (Hagopian 1996).
15
on party systems has depended as much on the reaction of the elite to their challenge, as on
their own strength. In order for a responsive party system to become institutionalized, a
rough balance in the vote share between old and new parties is necessary. Only one
particular trajectory results in the emergence of a responsive party system and an early
programmatic structuring of the party system. This is route 1 in Figure 1, where
polarization occurs and persists over a longer time-span due to the traditional elites’
capacity to defend their interests in the electoral arena. The resulting ideological conflicts
create strong political identities in which the party system is rooted. Ideology at least
partially crowds out clientelism since large segments of the electorate come to base their
vote choice on parties’ programmatic offerings, rather than direct material rewards. The
crowing-out effect is only partial because conservative parties, whose core constituency is
numerically smaller than that of middle class parties, frequently resort not only to religious
and conservative values in mobilizing beyond the rather narrow strata constituted by upper
classes, but also to clientelism in order to gain weight in electoral assemblies. In particular,
conservative parties tend to be entrenched in the countryside and frequently use clientelism
to get out the vote from dependent peasants and rural laborers.
Contrary to the slender route leading to a responsive party system, a variety of
trajectories results in settings in which clientelism is pervasive and where voters have
difficulties in identifying contrasting policy platforms. What they have in common is that
no polarization of the party system occurred between the 1930s and the 1960s. I call this
aborted polarization, because it represents the conscious effort of parties to restrict
competition. There are two basic ways to restrict competition and thereby to impede
polarization: The first is an outright ban on opposition parties to prevent them from
running in elections. The second, more subtle form sees elite parties retain their hold on
politics due to their monopoly on clientelistic resources, despite not being responsive to the
policy preferences of their electorate. Where the established parties succeed fully in
16
excluding challenging parties using either of these two strategies, I propose to call the
resulting system a dominant party system, even if more than one party competes in
elections and the system appears pluralistic at first sight. However, these contexts lack
what Levitsky and Way (2010) have termed a “level playing field”, making it next to
impossible for opposition parties to gain power. The key difference between a responsive
party system and a dominant party system in terms of citizen-politician linkages is that
voters are offered contrasting policy proposals in the first case, while they collude and thus
fail to do so in the second. As we shall see, dominant party systems can be the result either
of a restriction of competition on the part of older elite parties, or of a revolutionary
movement that succeeds in simply sweeping the old elite away. A responsive party system
thus necessitates the presence both of conservative, and of progressive parties.
With these theoretical premises in mind, it is now possible to sketch three paths
deviating from the successful trajectory to a responsive party system. First of all, elites
may choose to restrict competition despite having a mass basis that would help them
safeguard their interests in a more competitive regime (route 2 in Figure 2). Ultimately,
whether elites allow for competition or restrict it is not so much a question of political
culture, but depends on whether elites believe their position in a more open system to be
secure, or if they fear becoming marginalized. Where parties capable of protecting elite
interests did not institutionalize, two basic scenarios are possible: Either polarization is
aborted or ends (route 4), or progressive parties continue to challenge the status quo. In the
latter case, where traditional elites are unable to protect their interests the electoral arena,
they are likely to turn to the military to protect their interests in the wake of polarization
(route 3).
17
Although the expansion of the franchise plays an important role in triggering political
mobilization, whether or not ideological polarization occurs is largely independent of the
inclusiveness of the regime. Thus, conflicts may become heated in the context of a very
restricted franchise, as was the case in Chile throughout the first half of the 20th century.
On the other hand, parties may restrict competition long before universal suffrage is in
place. Thus, what I seek to explain is not the establishment of inclusive elections, as in
Rueschemeyer et al.’s (1992) work, but the responsiveness of party systems to those
effectively enfranchised around the 1960s. The hypothesis is that a system that is
responsive and open to the entry of new political actors will be able to adapt to an
extension of the franchise.2
In terms of case selection, my objective is to include as many Latin American countries
as possible in order to maximize variation in terms of the two key independent variables,
i.e. the capacity of elites to defend their interests in the electoral arena, and the degree of
polarization occurring in the later phase. On the other hand, the number of countries to be
considered faces constraints in terms of the manageability of the historical analysis. I
therefore focus on eleven Latin American countries, omitting the Central American and
Caribbean countries, which are generally analyzed on their own. However, to ensure
comparability with other major studies, I follow the common practice to include Mexico,
while Costa Rica, one of the oldest democracies in the region, will be included in a later
stage of the project. As we will see, these eleven cases provide some important variation in
terms of the two critical junctures postulated in the theoretical model.
2 The same is not true of party systems that had been weakly institutionalized and unresponsive the 1960s: Here, the expansion of the franchise in the process of re-democratization in the 1980s amplified the discontinuity with pre-coup party systems, as highlighted by Remmer (1985).
18
The pre-democratic order and the defense of elite interests
The common starting point of party system development in post-colonial Latin America is
the conflict between Liberals and Conservatives, and how it became channeled into party
conflict towards the end of the 19th century (McDonald and Ruhl 1989, Di Tella 2004,
Coppedge 1998). With the partial exception of Uruguay, religious issues – such as
religious or state control over education and the prerogatives of the state over those of the
Catholic church more generally – played an important role in this conflict. To varying
degrees, this antagonism also reflected divisions between geographical regions and elites
favoring the centralization of political authority as opposed to those who advocated
decentralized, federal government (Middlebrook 2000: 7-8, Hawkins et al. 2010: 242-50).
As such, this first critical juncture is comparable to what Rokkan (1999) has referred to as
the national revolution in the European context. Contrary to the European experience (see
Caramani 2004), this conflict did not result in the institutionalization of national party
systems throughout the continent. Consequently, it had strongly differing consequences for
the capacity of elites to safeguard their interests once middle class movements started to
assert themselves. Among the eleven cases covered in this analysis, party systems offered
elites a protection of their vital interests only Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, and Paraguay. I
begin the discussion with these countries. The following analysis of cases exhibiting a
failure of elites to protect their interests in the electoral arena is divided into two parts. I
start with Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador, where the regional division of elites resulted in
their failure to establish a nation-wide conservative party. Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and
Mexico, on the other hand, represent different variants of an illiberal political order, which
left elites with no party organizations that would have allowed them to rival progressive
forces when elections became more open.
19
Party systems with favorable conditions for the protection of elite interests: Chile,
Uruguay, Colombia, and Paraguay
Although the religious and political disputes of the 19th century were also fought out in the
battlefields, they were ultimately expressed in a relatively pluralistic order in Chile,
Uruguay, Paraguay, and Colombia. In Chile, the “Parliamentary Republic” of 1891 saw the
emergence of a competitive party system and the formation of a nationwide religious
cleavage (Scully 1992, Collier and Collier 2002). Although this conflict was also one about
the control of government and patronage resources (Valenzuela 1977), the religious
cleavage survived the later advent of a class cleavage, making the country’s party system
closely resemble those found in Western Europe. The early emergence of three parties
forced them to work together when in opposition, and the Conservatives believed that they
would profit from an extension of the suffrage due to their nationwide organization and
their strong links to local notables that controlled clientelistic networks (Scully 1992).
Although politics became more thoroughly clientelistic and the Conservatives and the
Liberals started to collude towards in the second decade of the 20th century (Valenzuela
1977), the early setting had resulted in the establishment of a conservative party with an
extensive party organization of national scope. This provided favorable conditions for the
re-emergence of ideological conflicts and the formation of an urban class cleavage in the
1920s as a result of the emergence of left-wing parties in the context of an extensive labor
movement.
The party systems of Uruguay, Colombia, and Paraguay exhibit some striking
similarities in terms of their origins and early features, being composed of two parties,
each of which displayed substantial internal factionalization. Since their party systems
could hardly look more different today, these countries illustrate the interaction between
the two critical junctures very nicely. In Uruguay and Colombia, strong party loyalties
20
resulted from the protracted civil wars in the 19th century (and beyond that in the case of
Colombia) and the fact that the entire population had taken sides in one of the camps that
later formed the Colorados and Blancos (or Nationals) in Uruguay, and the Liberals and
the Conservatives in Colombia. In a commonly shared view, a “long history of violence”
meant that “Personal physical security became intertwined with attachment to one or the
other party, giving party loyalty an unusual intensity” (Collier and Collier 2002: 124-5).3
The rigidity resulting from these close ties between citizens and parties, which were
galvanized by extensive patron-client networks and extensive party organizations spanning
the territory, led to the factionalization of parties along ideological lines (Di Tella 2004:
116; McDonald and Ruhl 1989, Collier and Collier 2002: 125-6). Furthermore, at the elite
level, a pluralistic order was facilitated, first, by the fact that the two camps were of similar
strength, and thus unable to defeat one another in the days of civil war. Secondly, the
oligarchy was divided and represented in both of the traditional parties (Collier and Collier
2002: 125, 748). In this context, the Colorado party in Uruguay and the Liberal Party in
Colombia each took the lead in the polarization phase, making advances to mobilize the
newly emerging middle and working class sectors.
Paraguay shares some of these countries’ features, as the Colorado and Liberal parties
founded around 1874 have dominated politics until very recently. While not resulting from
civil war as in Uruguay and Colombia, the factions within the Colorado and Liberal parties
also exhibited clear programmatic profiles, while the parties as such were heterogeneous
and engaged heavily in clientelistic mobilization (Abente 1995, McDonald and Ruhl 1989:
67). How pluralistic this system was is open to question and difficult to answer with the
historical accounts that are available. According to Rueschemeyer et al. (1992: 174),
export-based groups in society failed to impose constitutional oligarchic rule. At the same
time, civil and political liberties were respected, although the clientelistic nature of the
3 See also González (1991, 1995) on Uruguay and Wilde (1978) on Colombia.
21
system seems to have restricted competition (Abente 1995: 299). Furthermore, Dix (1989:
30) concurs with my assessment that Paraguayan parties resemble those in Uruguay and
Colombia in having built a multi-class alliance based on strong party loyalties and
clientelistic networks. Although the party system did not endure beyond the “Chaco War”
in the 1930s, the similarities with the Uruguayan and Colombian cases in the antecedent
period leads me to classify Paraguay in the group of countries displaying favorable
conditions for the protection of elite interests by national political parties.
Apart from the case of Paraguay, which is neglected in most comparative work focusing
in this period, my analysis conforms to Rueschemeyer et al’s (1992: 170) and Gibson’s
(1996: 26) assessment of the capacity of elites to defend their interests in the electoral
arena in Chile, Uruguay, and Colombia. It also concurs with Coppedge’s (1998)
characterization of the pre-democratic order as pluralistic or semi-pluralistic in these same
countries.
Regional division and the precarious protection of elite interests: Argentina, Brazil, and
Ecuador
Among the remaining countries, Argentina certainly comes closest to the cases previously
discussed. Despite the early formation of parties that became firmly entrenched in society,
the crucial problem for the protection of elite interests in a more inclusive political regime
was the division of conservative forces along regional lines (Gibson 1996: 41ff.).
Furthermore, because agriculture was not labor intensive, there was only a small peasant
base the Conservatives could use to mobilize support (McGuire 1995: 206, Collier and
Collier 2002: 104-5). Finally, the pre-democratic party system did not contribute to the
formation of a pluralistic political culture since one of the movements always tended to be
hegemonic. From 1880 to 1916, the Conservatives dominated. Since the working class was
22
of immigrant origin and thus not eligible to vote, they felt safe to give in to the demands
for universal suffrage in order to gain support from new social groups in 1912. However,
the 1916 elections proved them wrong, and they rapidly lost control over the political
system (Smith 1978). Except when they relied on extensive fraud, they never again gained
a majority in a free election, a feature clearly setting Argentina apart from Chile despite a
similar party spectrum (Di Tella 2004: 45). As Gibson’s (1996: 49-59) detailed analysis
shows, this was due to their failure to unite in a national conservative party. The rise of the
Radicals, which emerged in the 1890s and established extensive party networks in the
urban middle class, resulted in the early polarization of the party system along ideological
lines (Alonso 2000).4 What mitigated the emergence of a pluralistic political culture is that
the Radicals grew hegemonic from 1916 on. In part, there are structural reasons to this, as
the country’s early development resulted in a stronger middle class than elsewhere. But the
Radicals also actively strived for dominance in not making much effort to accommodate
the Conservatives, as President Yrigoyen circumvented the parliament by ruling by decree.
More importantly still, the Radicals tried to oust the Conservatives from the provincial
governments which they had dominated, and “(...) sought to eliminate the key source of
conservative electoral strength: the machinery of state patronage and electoral
manipulation provided by control of provincial governments” (Gibson 1996: 56). The
result was a phase of instability and a stronger involvement of the military in politics,
which ultimately lead to the emergence of Juan Perón as the leader of a new political
movement.
Brazil represents an even more extreme case of disunity of conservative forces, as the
political order was extremely de-centralized in the first republic from 1889 to 1930, with
each of the states having its own party system. Consequently, national politics became 4 The Radicals’ revolutionary posture was lost later on, which results in the dominant view that the Radicals and Conservatives did not have strongly contrasting ideological views (e.g., Gibson 1996: Ch.2, Madsen and Snow 1991: 40). Collier and Collier (2002: 134) and Remmer (1984: 87-103) present evidence of ideological polarization after the Radicals took power in 1916.
23
known as the “Politics of Governors”, and conflict resolution was characterized by
gentlemen’s agreements, rather than being processed in a nationalized elite party system.
Subsequently, in Vargas’ “Estado Novo”, inspired by European Fascism, parties were
abolished altogether in 1937 (Skidmore 1967: 12-41, Lamounier 1990, Bornschier 2008: 9-
12).
Ecuador started out with a fairly institutionalized system of elite parties serving as
electoral vehicles for contending segments of the oligarchy. The Conservatives and the
Liberals represented a regional divide between the conservative highlands around Quito
and the more liberal coastal region around Guayaquil (Conaghan 1995: 439). The Liberals
began to dominate from 1895 on due to the economic boom of the coastal region, but they
did not establish control over the territory and simply left the landowners in the highlands
in control (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992: 174). In other words, the party system lost its
capacity to represent important interests long before any significant extensions of the
franchise occurred and the two traditional parties were challenged by new ideological
movements. The resulting political instability made military rule become the norm
(McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 305).
Variants of an illiberal political order and the failure of traditional elites to secure their
power: Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Mexico
In Peru, the political order prior to the extension of the franchise to the middle classes did
not prompt different segments of society to invest in party building to pursue their
interests. After independence, politics became a matter between military strongmen
(McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 210). There was no strong religious conflict due to the potent
position of the Catholic church, and the landowning oligarchy was hostile to open political
competition (Middlebrook 2000: 24-6). The upper classes, which had been fractionalized
24
and regionally divided, did partly unite behind the aristocratic Civilista Party that was
founded in 1872 and governed between 1899 and 1912 (Di Tella 2004: 8).5 In a context of
emerging labor protest and first reforms to improve the conditions of workers, there was
intense conflict between more progressive and more liberal factions within the Civilista
Party, resulting in repeated regime crises. In 1912, the oppositional Democratic Party’s
candidate became president, only to be overthrown by the military shortly after, shifting
power back to the Civilistas. But internal tension within the party and between various
presidential candidates continued, prompting the military to intervene yet again, this time
backing Leguía’s progressive Civilista government, which led the country in an
increasingly authoritarian direction (Collier and Collier 2002: 132-40). Thus, elite
contestation was never firmly institutionalized (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992: 176).
Subsequently, the dictatorship that was in place from 1919 to 1930 destroyed the
embryonic party system, and when democratic elections were re-instituted, there was no
conservative party to defend elite interests (Gibson 1996: 35-6).
According to Whitehead (2001: 22-5), two conflicting tendencies are discernible in
Bolivian political history: An old liberal-constitutionalist tradition that saw the introduction
of a directly elected president as early as 1839, and a tendency to by-pass political
institutions in a grassroots mobilization against the prevailing political order. In the late
19th century, the party system did seemed capable of channeling the conflicts of the day.
The Liberal and Conservative parties represented diverging interests between the tin
mining and declining silver mining industries, respectively (Gamarra and Malloy 1995:
400). Klein (1969: 25) presents impressive evidence that the number of political revolts
declined sharply from 1840 onwards, reaching extraordinarily low levels in the 1880s.
Although occasional instances of civil war occurred, and despite the dominance of the 5 According to Gibson (1996: 35-6), on the other hand, the Civilista Party failed to reach out beyond its base in the prosperous coastal elite, and Collier and Collier (2002: 131) note that the other parties were characterized “…more by their regional orientation than by any consistent ideological differences with the Cilivistas…”. Peru thus displays important similarities to Argentina, Brazil, and Ecuador.
25
Liberals between 1899 and 1920, the order remained to some degree pluralistic, since the
reign of the Liberals prompted the emergence of the Republican party, which took power
in 1920. Rueschemeyer et al. (1992: 160-1) classify Bolivia as constitutionally oligarchic
until 1930 and as authoritarian between 1930 and 1952.
Contrary to Coppedge (1998: 196), who blames the Chaco War (1932-35) for the
destruction of the elite party system, a liberal political regime with universal suffrage for
literate male citizens actually re-emerged in 1938 (Whitehead 2001: 25). In the 1942
elections, however, characterized by Klein (1969: 354) as “uniquely free” in Bolivian
history, the oligarchy lost the chamber of deputies to the left, and although they proved
creative in forming anti-leftist alliances, their inferiority with respect to the growing
Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) and the Party of the Revolutionary Left (PIR)
was annihilating (see Klein 1969: Ch. 11). The instability of subsequent left-wing and
right-wing governments amidst violently repressed worker protest paved the way for
military intervention in politics and, ultimately, for the revolution of 1952.
Mexico. The advent of the Mexican revolution is a more well-known variant of the
Bolivian story, where left-wing or progressive mobilization swept away the old political
order. In Mexico, however, the pre-revolutionary order had been far less pluralistic, and
the preconditions for the emergence of an institutionalized party system were inexistent.
Elite competition was not institutionalized due to the Liberals’ victory in the civil wars that
followed independence and the hegemonic regime they subsequent put in place;
consequently, the antagonism between Liberals and Conservatives vanished, and the
religious cleavage was more or less resolved (Coppedge 1998: 190-1). A single leader,
Díaz, governed from 1876 to 1911, inaugurating a tradition of intolerance for the
opposition. According to Rueschemeyer et al. (1992: 200-4), the failure to consolidate state
26
power and elite heterogeneity prevented the emergence of a constitutional oligarchic
regime. Consequently, no mass political parties formed prior to the revolution.
In many ways, the pre-revolutionary order in Mexico was similar to that in Venezuela,
which embarked on the revolutionary path directly from a long and stable military
dictatorship that lasted from 1899 to 1945. Long before, the religious conflict of the 19th
century had been resolved within a closed political system, and the direct assault on the
prerogatives of the Church in the context of a secular consensus therefore did not lead to a
conservative counter-mobilization (Middlebrook 2000: 15-7). Due to the oil bonanza, the
military dictatorship survived the crisis of the 1930s, but an opening in the regime
nonetheless occurred with the death of Gómez in 1935 (Collier and Collier 2002: 196).
Ideology challenges clientelism: Differing trajectories in the
polarization phase
The elite political order prior to the extension of the suffrage to wider parts of the middle
class had profound implications for the capacity of party systems to channel political
conflict when the rise of left-wing or other progressive forces occurred throughout Latin
America at the beginning of the 20th century and beyond. Some countries lacked a pluralist
party system that helped to provide a basis for the party political organization of the upper
classes and other conservative segments in the new, more competitive regime. The
formation of a responsive mass party system under such circumstances proved difficult due
to two interrelated reasons. For one thing, elites relied more heavily on the military when
they found their vital interests threatened, and the resulting frequent interruption of
27
democratic party competition meant that even the formation of stable political options –
either of a clientelistic or programmatic kind – was made difficult. In other words, these
party systems failed even to institutionalize, which made it all the more unlikely that
ideological polarization would gradually transform a clientelistic party system into a
system responsive to the policy preferences of voters. Secondly, the absence of a clearly
identifiable antagonist to progressive parties, and the resulting lack of conflict along
ideological lines, inhibited the formation of collective political identities and party
attachments, a precondition for cleavage formation.
What kind of linkages prevailed in the mass party system also depended on the strength
of progressive parties and on the strategic choices they made. Thus, where the party system
had been institutionalized, and the right was firmly entrenched, the progressive challenge
during the polarization phase had the capacity to push the system towards programmatic
structuring only under three conditions. First, similarly to what we have seen for the
institutionalization of a pluralistic elite party system, a balance of power between
progressive and conservative elements, or even a preponderance of the latter, was
necessary. In the cases in which progressive movements were hegemonic, no responsive
party system formed. The Argentine case, where Peronism became hegemonic after the
1940s, provides an interesting variation of this pattern, however. Second, in order to
perpetuate responsiveness, the polarizing party must maintain its ideological character and
avoid moving to the center – contrary to what may be the most promising strategy to
ensure elite acceptance of democracy. The downside of the latter strategy is that ideology
gets lost, as progressive parties entangle themselves in contradictions. The progressive
party will be forced to keep its ideological stance, on the other hand, if the entry of a more
extreme competitor remains possible. This represents the third condition.
Institu
tion
alized
party
syste
ms
secu
ringd
efe
nse
of e
lite in
tere
stsElite parties w
eakly institutionalized or regionally divided
Elite party system resulting from
conflict between Liberals and C
onservatives
Re
spo
nsive
party
sy
stem
, early
p
rog
ram
matic
structu
ring
Mo
bilizatio
n o
f th
e le
ft resu
lts in
ide
olo
gical p
ola
rization
Established parties nonetheless exclude
the left: ab
orte
d
po
larizatio
n
Dom
inant party system,
clientelism pervasive
Internally m
obilized parties and corporatist institutions: ab
orte
d
po
larizatio
n
Party system not
responsive, clientelism
pervasive
Revolutionary parties take
power:
po
larizatio
n
en
de
d
Frequent military coups
to protect elite interests as result of
polarization
Political space open, but party system
institutionalization
impeded, clientelism
pervasive
Phase before mass politics
(turn of 19./20. C.), elite
representation
Polarization phase (~
1930-1960)
Resulting party system
and predominant linkage
type
CountriesC
hileU
ruguay C
olombia
ParaguayM
exico Venezuela
BrazilEcuador
Peru
Reform
ist party moves
to the center: p
ola
rization
e
nd
ed
Reform
ist party does not m
ove to the center: id
eo
logical
po
larizatio
n
main
tain
ed
, but lim
ited phases of dem
ocracy
Political space closed, stro
ng p
olitical
ide
ntitie
s in
mo
de
rately
stab
le
party
syste
m
Argentina
Revolutionary party fails to achieve
hegemony, but party
system not
responsive, clientelism
pervasive
Bolivia
Figure 2: Summ
ary of country trajectories resulting from the tw
o critical junctures
29
To put the findings in their simplest form, then, the emergence of a responsive party
system requires a challenging party that exhibits a clear ideological profile, yet does not
electorally override its conservative competitors. Figure 2 presents the trajectory of our
eleven cases from the elite party system in place roughly at the turn of the 19th to the 20th
century through the polarization phase. While corresponding to the theoretically outlined
routes in Figure 1, this figure provides more detailed information on how polarization
ended or was aborted in those cases that lacked a strongly institutionalized, national
conservative party. Finally, the party system that resulted in the 1960s or 1970s as a result
of the combination of the two critical junctures is indicated.
Ideological polarization and the emergence of a programmatically structured mass party
system in Chile and Uruguay, and aborted polarization in Colombia and Paraguay
The analysis of the route to the early emergence of a responsive party system starts with a
more extended discussion of the Chilean trajectory, which constitutes the classical case to
illustrate the logic of the argument. The analysis then moves to the contrasting
development of in Uruguayan and Colombian cases. These two countries share many
features in terms of their pre-democratic order and the make-up of their party systems until
the 1960s, while they diverge in terms of the key variable constituting the second critical
juncture in my model. Finally, the case of Paraguay does not require much elaboration, as
it represents a more conventional variant of a dominant party system.
The fact that political polarization occurred in two steps in Chile, separated by several
decades, had the propitious consequence of providing the country with an experience of
party competition long enough for the party system to develop firm roots in society before
the Pinochet regime put an end to democracy in 1973. Although Chile’s party system is
often considered to have followed the European route to cleavage formation, Scully (1992)
30
convincingly argues that not one, but two decisive moments have shaped the party system
after the formation of the religious cleavage in the 19th century. In the first instance,
polarization resulted from the mobilization of the Socialist Workers’ Party in 1912, which
later became the Communist Party of Chile and remained closely tied to the labor
movement. The Socialist party that still exists today, on the other hand, was originally an
internally mobilized party formed in 1933 (Collier and Collier 2002: 355). The emergence
of the left resulted in a party system that lasted from 1932 to 1952 and was composed of
the Communist and Socialist parties, the Radicals, and the Conservatives. The oligarchy
remained in a strong electoral position during this period due to its clientelistic control of
the vote of the rural population (Collier and Collier 2002: 104, 107).6 The resulting de
facto exclusion of rural workers from political decision-making – which involved the left’s
tacit disposition to refrain from mobilizing the rural proletariat – formed a central element
of the new political compromise of this era (Scully 1992: 62-105).
This pattern was altered by the spread of the class cleavage into the countryside in the
late 1950s, the second decisive moment in 20th century Chilean political history according
to Scully (1992). In conjuncture with a gradual extension of the suffrage, the introduction
of the secret ballot in 1958, and the mobilization of rural workers by the Christian
Democrats, ideological party competition grew more intense outside the urban industrial
sector. The Radicals, which had engaged in clientelistic mobilization and occupied a
brokerage position at the center of the political spectrum, were gradually replaced by the
Christian Democrats as the third force in the party system. The Conservatives and the
Liberals fused to form the National Party for the defense of conservative interests, while
the Communists and the Socialists joined together in the Popular Unity Front. Due to the
over-representation of rural areas as the stronghold of conservative forces, these three
6 Due to the strongly restricted suffrage, large parts of the rural sector were not formally eligible to vote. However, is was common practice in many countries in this era for rural landowners or patrons to register loyal workers as voters, although they did not meet the literacy requirement.
31
formations eventually came to capture roughly similar shares of the vote. This gave the
National Party a veto in parliament, and the conservative forces thus agreed to continue
playing the democratic game.
Increasingly, however, ideological polarization and the waning of the religious cleavage
destroyed the vertical patron-client relationship that had secured the National Party’s
strong showing not only in the cities, but also in the countryside, as Scully’s (1992: 106-
170) detailed analysis shows.7 The Chilean political system had been characterized by the
dualism between an interest-based central arena and a clientelistic local arena, with the
clientelistic logic prevalent in municipal politics feeding back into national politics. Under
the presidencies of Frei and Allende, ideology triumphed in the 1960s and 1970s, slowly
ousting clientelism from the central political arena (Valenzuela 1977). In this context, the
right abandoned its support for the democratic regime, and in 1973, a military coup ended
Chile’s impressive record of uninterrupted elections that had began in 1932. However, the
party system had become entrenched firmly enough to survive the Pinochet’s military
dictatorship, and re-surfaced in surprisingly similar form in the 1980s.
Both in Uruguay and in Colombia, polarization first occurred as one of the two traditional
parties turned to the left. Both the Colorados in Uruguay, as well as the Liberals in
Colombia enacted legislation in favor of the working class. By making concessions to
labor at a very early stage in the development of the labor movement, they reinforced their
standing vis-à-vis their conservative competitor and considerably retarded the emergence
of challenging parties of the left. This leads Collier and Collier (2002) to characterize the
two countries as instances of working class incorporation by a traditional party. Indeed, the
7 For a concurring view, see Coppedge (1998: 183). Likewise, Rueschemeyer et al. (1992: 180) highlight that the state’s involvement in import substituting industrialization provided the resources for state patronage that ensured a continued strong electoral base for right-wing parties.
32
strategy proved successful in that Uruguay and Colombia stand out for their enduring two-
party systems. Aided by the pluralistic pre-democratic order that secured conservative
forces adequate protection of their interests in the political arena,8 as well as by the fact
that neither the Colorados in Uruguay, nor the Liberals in Colombia made major efforts to
mobilize in the rural sector, and did not enact radical land reforms (Collier and Collier
2002: 271), the traditional parties succeeded in dominating politics for decades to come.
The project of social and political reform launched by José Batlle y Ordóñez in Uruguay
in 1903 was ambitious and far-reaching, especially given its early enactment. In particular,
Battle introduced welfare legislation that was generous and progressive even by European
standards at the time (see Collier and Collier 2002: 273-84). Also, he introduced the secret
ballot in 1915 and universal suffrage in 1919, attempting to win the support of the working
class, the “greatest untapped electoral resource in Uruguay” (Collier and Collier 2002:
279). Colombia, on the other hand, made a transition to a political regime with universal
suffrage, but maintained restricted contestation between 1936 to 1949 (Rueschemeyer et al.
1992: 160). While the legislation enacted by the Liberals in Colombia likewise succeeded
in rolling back the emerging mobilization of the left, the crucial difference between the two
cases in terms of my theoretical argument is that the two major parties in Colombia ended
polarization by consent later on, and banned all other parties. In Uruguay, conversely, the
party system remained competitive and became polarized anew by the gradual emergence
of the Communist party, which later came to form part of the Frente Amplio. These
differences resulted in an increasing role of programmatic party competition in Uruguay,
while a deeply clientelistic system was perpetuated in Colombia. While the cases of
Colombia and Uruguay are indeed similar in important respects, then, as emphasized by
Collier and Collier (2002), my own argument focuses on two crucial differences that
explain the linkage type that became prevalent in the 1960s and continues to be so today.
8 As noted before, elite sectors were represented in both of the traditional parties.
33
First of all, when the progressive turn in Uruguay provoked a conservative counter-
reaction,9 as it did after the incorporation of the working class not only in Colombia, but
also in Venezuela, Peru, and Mexico, according to Collier and Collier’s (2002) analysis,
the Colorado Party did not move back to the center. In fact, while progressive elements
were expulsed from the parties that had incorporated the working class in all the other
cases, the Colorados chose not to do so because they feared that they would join the left-
wing opposition (Collier and Collier 2002: 454). This points to the second factor setting
Uruguay and Colombia apart, namely, that the established parties in Uruguay never
restricted competition. In particular, they did not outlaw the Communists, and there was
never a pact or an agreement to limit the choice of policy options, as Collier and Collier
(2002: 453) highlight. Given the strong entrenchment of the established parties in
Uruguay, and the successful integration of the working class into the Colorado’s electoral
base, it was not until the mid-1960s that the Communist Party could be considered a
relevant party and had grown strong enough to polarize the party system anew (González
1991: 128, Collier and Collier 2002: 643-648). In 1971, the left-wing Frente Amplio,
which united the Communists, the Christian Democrats, progressive lists from within the
traditional parties, as well as a few minor parties, reached 18% of the vote (González 1995:
150). In conjuncture with economic difficulties, a radicalization of the labor movement, an
increasingly stalemated party system, and the growing role of the military after the defeat
of the Tupamaro urban guerrilla movement, a military coup ended democracy in 1973.
In Colombia, the progressive turn of the Liberals eventually ushered not only in a
conservative counter-reaction, but into the civil war known as “La Violencia”, lasting from
1948 to the 1958. According to Collier and Collier (2002: 312-3), the civil war was at least
partly a result of class conflict and ideological polarization. More importantly, however, as
9 A military coup occurred in Uruguay in 1933, resulting in a suspension of democracy until 1942. This interruption of democratic elections proved to be of minor importance, however, since it did not significantly transform the party system.
34
stressed by Wilde (1978), it reflected the end of the traditional arrangement of politics as
“conversation among gentlemen”. This involved the sharing of patronage resources by the
two traditional parties, and as the Conservatives wanted to exclude the Liberals from these
resources, rural Liberal guerrilla organizations were formed (Collier and Collier 2002:
458). To end the civil war after ten years of violence, the National Front was formed in
1958, a constitutional provision in which the Liberals and the Conservatives agreed to
refrain from polarization, to alternate in the presidency, to distribute bureaucratic posts
outside the civil service equitably, and to exclude all other parties from competing. The
agreement was approved in a popular vote and was to remain in vigor until 1974, but was
later prolonged until 1978 (Martz 1997: 35, Di Tella 2004: 94-6). In the resulting façade
democracy, local political bosses obtained a vital role in distributing patronage and in
securing the loyal vote for the regime. The Communists, which were strongest in the
countryside, were violently repressed, leading to the emergence of guerilla groups (Collier
and Collier 2002: 439, 461-8, 671-2, 685-6). At the same time, the civil war, fought along
partisan lines, also served to reinforce the strong partisan loyalties to the traditional parties,
as had been the case in the 19th century both in Uruguay and in Colombia. In the 1974
elections, which Collier and Collier (2002: 667-691) judge to have been competitive, the
traditional parties obtained 90% of the vote.
There is broad agreement on the overwhelming reliance of parties on clientelism in
Colombia (Wilde 1978, Martz 1997, Collier and Collier 2002: 671-3, Pizarro Leongómez
2006), even if its organization has changed and is less strictly controlled by parties today
(Archer 1990, 1995). Consequently, we may label Colombia as an instance of two-party
dominance, where the established parties jointly exclude challengers either by an outright
ban, as was the case until 1978, or by their privileged access to state resources, a strategy
they also pursued thereafter. Consequently, it was only in the most recent years that the
established parties in Colombia saw a gradual erosion of their dominant position.
35
In Uruguay, on the other hand, clientelism has traditionally also played a major role,
and the early pluralist order was facilitated by the fact that the Colorados and Blancos
agreed to share pork-barrel resources at various points (Hagopian 1996: 264). There were
even if there were phases of power-sharing (Altman 2008: 488-498), but the traditional
parties never agreed on a common political program that defined the policy options
acceptable to both of them. This contrasts the Uruguayan trajectory not only from the
Colombian, but also from the Venezuelan, as we will see. While we cannot be sure in
which phases ideology was more important than clientelism in generating votes in
Uruguay, González (1991: 25-8) convincingly argues that politics in Uruguay was never
only a matter of clientelism, although both the Colorados and the Blancos, being internally
mobilized parties, were of course able to pursue a mixed mobilization strategy. It was thus
the Frente Amplio that launched the most severe assault on clientelism from the 1960s on,
as contended by Luna (n.d.) and González (1991: 125). Since the party system re-emerged
in strikingly similar shape after the bureaucratic-authoritarian regime in place between
1973 and 1985 (González 1991, 1995), Uruguay stands out as having a uniquely
programmatic party system, as we will see. What is more, there is recent comparative
expert data to show that Uruguay today clearly stands out for clientelism playing a
negligible role in party mobilization (Kitschelt et al.’s 2009: 769).
Paraguay represents a more conventional case of a dominant party system than Colombia.
The Liberals held power from 1904 to 1936, and the 1928 elections are judged to have
been competitive and inclusive for the time, with 20 percent of the population registered to
vote (Abente 1995: 299). While the Communist left was weak, a progressive liberal
splinter movement calling for land reform and far-reaching social reforms appeared after
the Chaco war (McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 67). The movement was overthrown in 1937 by
36
the military, and a phase of instability and military dictatorships followed, at the end of
which General Stroessner established a de-facto one-party dominant system. Opposition
was tolerated to a certain degree in order to give the regime a democratic façade, although
the Communists remained outlawed. However, the electoral rules guaranteed the strongest
party two-thirds of the seats in parliament, and the Colorados, which supported Stroessner,
always won the elections (McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 68-9, Di Tella 2004). The
dictatorship was both repressive and co-optive, and clientelism played a dominant role in
the official party’s mobilization (Abente 1995: 306-9).
Taken together, the Colombian and the Paraguayan cases show that the nature of the
pre-democratic order is not deterministic. Countries set on a route that provides them with
favorable circumstances for defending elite interests and thus channeling conflict in the
party system may nonetheless see competition restrained. Thus, there is considerable room
for political agency beyond the balance of forces in society as they are reflected politically
in the party system. The following sections deal with cases in which the circumstances
were far less favorable than in those just discussed. In Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia,
progressive forces easily won the upper hand against conservative interests, while the
inability of conservative parties to defend their interests in the electoral arena in Brazil,
Ecuador, Peru, and Argentina resulted in a mismatch between the political and social
balance of power.
Revolution: Progressive parties take power in Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia
Mexico. The statement will be rather uncontroversial that the Mexican Revolution of 1917,
supported by a broad cross-class alliance, and the formation of a pro-regime Party of the
Institutionalized Revolution (PRI) that was to become dominant, eclipsed any real party
competition in Mexico. The strength of the progressive impetus was due to the inclusion of
37
the peasantry alongside the working class in the incorporation project, and in the corollary
that the movement called for land reform (Collier and Collier 2002: 196-250).
Nonetheless, Collier and Collier (2002: 197) state that “(…) one must understand radical
populism as an elite project to establish the political dominance of elements of the
emerging urban middle sectors” – although the process then took on a dynamic of its own.
As far as the dominant classes were concerned, they had not only failed to institutionalize
open elite contestation among them due to the heterogeneity of their interests
(Rueschemeyer et al. 1992: 200), the landed elite also lacked control of the peasantry as a
basis of support (Collier and Collier 2002: 114).
The PRI constituted a lose coalition of local political machines, and the dominant party
system institutionalized thanks to patronage and political favors (McDonald and Ruhl
1989: 48-9, 51-2). In 1939, the catholic and anti-socialist National Action Party (PAN) was
formed to oppose the PRI, but lacking the resources to challenge its rival, it would take
another sixty years for the PAN to seize power (Greene 2007). The result was that Mexico
never had any experience with democracy until recently – at the same time, however, the
Mexican regime relied much more on co-optation than on repression (Rueschemeyer et al.
1992: 199). Thus, despite its dominant status, the PRI actively campaigned for elections
that were almost impossible to lose, distributing selective incentives (Langston and
Morgenstern 2009). Furthermore, state-sponsored unions effectively de-mobilized the
working class (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992: 203), similarly to what was the case in Brazil, as
we will see. The result, then, was not only that the PRI was able to maintain its dominant
status despite some degree of open contestation. Due to its entrenchment in clientelistic
networks, it even retains a strong position within the increasingly pluralist pattern of party
competition emerging since the 2000s.
38
Venezuela shares a number of important features with Mexico. When repression during the
long phase of military dictatorships was loosened in the mid-1930s, Acción Democrática
(AD) managed to crowd out the Communists and became the dominant opposition
movement against the dictatorship. Similarly to what occurred in Mexico, AD rallied the
working and peasant classes behind what was essentially a middle-class project,
demanding radical political and social change, such as calling for universal suffrage and
extensive land reform (Collier and Collier 2002: 196-201). Although AD was an externally
mobilized party with a rather radical program, it profited from the democratic Zeitgeist and
the opening of the military dictatorship: According to Karl (1986), it was actually invited
to govern together with the military in order to prevent an internal succession crisis. The
Revolutionary Junta enacted universal suffrage without property or literacy requirements,
and AD quickly came close to achieving hegemony during its three-year rule between
1945 and 1948, known as the “Trienio”. In the elections for the constituent assembly and
the subsequent elections, it received between 70 and 80% of the votes (Coppedge 1998:
192-3, Collier and Collier 2002: 263). AD built a strong party organization reaching down
to the local level, established links to unions, and by the end of the Trienio achieved
dominance in the labor movement, where it had been rivaled by the Communists. AD was
ousted from power in 1948 in a new military coup due to the broad opposition and the
“extreme polarization” its short period of rule had generated, and democracy was
suspended (Collier and Collier 2002: 267-70).
The Venezuelan success story began only with the “pacted democracy” established in
1958, from where on the country is commonly considered a model for the viability of
democracy in unstable 1960s and 1970s (e.g., Karl 1986, Collier and Collier 2002). Indeed,
Venezuela holds an almost unrivalled record of regular democratic elections between 1958
39
and the late 1990s.10 At the face of it, the new regime was pluralistic, as AD’s dominance
during the Trienio had provoked the strengthening of an opposition party that was to play
an important role after the return to democracy in 1958. COPEI was formed in the 1940s,
and came to adopt a catholic profile during AD’s rule due to the latter’s attack on catholic
educational institutions (Middlebrook 2000: 15-7). COPEI also rallied landowners who
were hostile to the agrarian reform promoted by AD (Collier and Collier 2002: 269), as
well as those who were preoccupied with the newly established dominance of AD
(Coppedge 1994, 1998: 193).
In the Pact of Punto Fijo, which re-established democracy in 1958, three parties,
including AD and COPEI, agreed on a number of policy principles, as well as to share both
power and patronage resources such as the “(...) access to state jobs and contracts, a
partitioning of ministries, and a complicated spoils system which would ensure the
political survival of all signatories” (Karl 1986: 213). The result was an effective de-
politicization of economic policy issues, aided by the wealth created by oil. Although the
Communists had been part of the coalition demanding the return to democracy, they were
excluded from the Punto Fijo agreement. According to Martz (1964: 515), the ban on the
Communists and the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in the 1963 elections meant that
parties representing around 10% of the electorate were outlawed. Over the 1960s, AD
purged three factions that did not agree on the party’s centrist course, and maintained iron
party discipline. Subsequently, AD and COPEI came to dominate not only the electoral
arena, but also civil society, co-opting all independent organization (Coppedge 1994: 18-
46, 148-52, Roberts 2003). In this “Partyarchy”, clientelism became pervasive: Coppedge
demonstrates that the factional struggles between “ins” and “outs” within AD had no
ideological content whatsoever, and instead constituted rival clientelistic networks
10 Venezuela is one of the few countries in Latin America that is classified as “free” by Freedom House for this entire period (see www.freedomhouse.org). See also Coppedge (2005).
40
penetrating the entire territory (Coppedge 1994: 136-52). Due to the constriction of the
ideological spectrum and the clientelistic nature of mobilization pursued by the major
parties, the Venezuelan party system lost its responsiveness to popular preferences. With
the neo-liberal policy turn of the 1980s and the drying up of the resources to fuel their
clientelistic networks, the reign of AD and COPEI came crashing down (see also Roberts
2003). First, this lead to the emergence of new parties such as Causa R and MAS, and
finally to the victory of Hugo Chávez as an anti-party candidate in 1998.
Bolivia to a certain degree followed the Mexican and Venezuelan path in that a broad
alliance of progressive forces together with the military took power in the “Revolution of
1952”. Given the relative weakness of the parties representing conservative forces, the
candidate of the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) won the 1951 presidential
elections, but the military prevented the party from taking power. After a popular uprising
in its favor and two days of fighting, the MNR took power in 1952, and between 1952 and
1964 Bolivia could be considered a full democracy according to Rueschemeyer et al.’s
(1992: 160) classification. As in Mexico and Venezuela, the revolutionary alliance was led
by the middle class, but had included the peasantry, although the MNR subsequently made
little effort to act on behalf of the Campesino peasants, which were mainly of Indian
decent (McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 227, 231, Di Tella 2004: 188). Nonetheless, the MNR
enacted radical reforms such as the expropriation of latifundia and the nationalization of
large parts of the tin industry (Di Tella 2004, Klein 1969). The revolutionary party also
sought to establish a single-party regime by employing clientelist resources to mobilize
workers and peasants while at the same controlling their autonomous political articulation
(Gamarra and Malloy 1995: 402-5). Although the MNR failed to achieve dominance
because its clientelistic character resulted in internal factionalization and a large number of
41
spin-offs (McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 228, 232), the revolution swept right-wing parties off
the political landscape, and the MNR had no clearly identifiable antagonist. According to
Klein (1969: Ch. 12), the bourgeoisie was decimated by sky-rocketing inflation, while the
land reform eliminated the landed upper class as a relevant political actor. Consequently,
when the military took power in 1964, it did not do so on behalf of the upper classes, as the
land reform and the model of state capitalism were not reversed during the dictatorship.
The MNR, however, lost its revolutionary impetus long before, as it was forced to
follow the policy dictates of the USA in exchange for financial support in the severe
economic crisis (Klein 1969: 403-9, Di Tella 2004: 81-4). It de-militarized the Campesinos
and pressured them into corporatist structures to isolate them from the more radical unions
(Whitehead 2001: 28, 34, Van Cott 2000). In conjuncture with the narrowing of the range
of societal interests and of the party spectrum, the MNR’s move to the center and its
reliance on clientelism to generate support inhibited the institutionalization of a party
system along ideological lines. The military governments that were in power until 1978
kept party competition in place, although tightly constricted, and continued to use
clientelistic networks to generate support, according to Gamarra and Malloy (1995: 405-9).
With these networks staying in place, it is not surprising that the patterns of political
mobilization in the 1980s continued to evolve around clientelistic resources. Furthermore,
pragmatic alliances with ideological enemies blurred the party’s programmatic image
(Gamarra and Malloy 1995: 413, Whitehead 2001: 36, Di Tella 2004: 159-62), and the
Bolivian party system of the 1980s is one of the least institutionalized in Latin America, as
we will see. The feature that the dominant party systems of Mexico and Venezuela share
with the fluid Bolivian party system, however, is the pervasiveness of clientelism and the
lack of responsiveness of parties to voter preferences.
42
Clientelistic de-mobilization: Ecuador and Brazil
In Ecuador, the failure of elites to establish a nationwide conservative party to defend their
interests was attenuated by the fact that their position was not challenged by strong
progressive movements or parties (Rueschemeyer et al. 1992: 171). In the 1930s, José
María Velasco Ibarra established “Velascismo” as a lasting political tendency in the
country, but his movement was largely devoid of ideology (Conaghan 1995: 446,
McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 310). Velasco owed his early successes to his close ties to the
traditional elites, and although he resembled Argentina’s Peron in rhetoric, he “…never
produced real material and political advances for lower-class supporters” (Conaghan 1995:
446). Although creating various parties, his movement was “quintessentially antiparty”
(McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 310). Velasco became president five times (four times by
election, once by insurrection), and was deposed four times by military coup (McDonald
and Ruhl 1989: 310).
From the 1940s on, a plethora of parties developed. Apart from the numerous, but weak
parties of the left, they resulted from splits from the traditional Liberal and Conservative
parties. As a result, the party system became increasingly fragmented, with around 80
parties competing for voters in the mid-1960s (McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 308-). Conaghan
(1995: 441-) is very explicit in her analysis of the raison d’être of this fragmentation: not
differing policy platforms, but selective incentives and the clientelistic distribution of
resources through extensive neighborhood networks shape party behavior in Ecuador.
Even miniscule parties can negotiate with larger parties to trade resources against votes,
and because politicians often cannot deliver the promised goods to their voters, preferences
are unstable. Consequently, the elite party system de-institutionalized, and only in 1970 did
Izquierda Democrática appear as Ecuador’s the first ideologically united mass party
(McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 312). However, its support has been volatile, and although it
43
won the presidency in 1988, its rise does not seem to have resulted to a polarization of
political space along ideological lines. Consequently, political change came from without
the party system: Neither the indigenous uprising of 1990, nor Rafael Correa’s ascendency
to the presidency and his promise of a “Socialism for the 21st Century” in 2007 were
backed by political parties (Conaghan 2008).
In Brazil, the deeply clientelistic nature of the party system during Brazil’s “Experiment in
Democracy” from 1945 to 1964 (Skidmore 1967) represented a more deliberate attempt to
pre-empt bottom-up mobilization than was the case in Ecuador. From 1937 on, parties had
been banned, and before Vargas was forced to step down by the military, he created two
internally mobilized parties to rally support in the newly established democratic regime.
The Social Democratic Party (PSD) was formed as the party of the regional elites and was
to mobilize votes using the traditional clientelistic networks. The Brazilian Labor Party
(PTB), on the other hand, was created by Vargas’ allies in the labor movement and
conceived as a mass party to bring out the vote of the urban working class, aided by state-
sponsored unions that distributed benefits based on particularistic criteria (Skidmore 1967:
54-62, Hagopian 1996: 61-2, Weyland 1996). In ideological terms, the two parties differed
little, and often formed alliances in elections. As no nationalized party system had existed
since 1889, these parties were created from scratch. The Communist Party, the only
surviving party from the years prior to Vargas’ dictatorship, was banned in 1947.11 The
major third party in the post-1945 regime, the National Democratic Union (UDN)
represented the opponents of the Vargas dictatorship, and had advocated a return to
democracy. In the countryside, the UDN and the PSD represented dissenting factions of
the landed elites, which achieved a dominant role in both parties in the new democratic
11 According to Collier and Collier (2002: 370), the Brazilian Communist Party was the strongest in Latin America in 1945.
44
regime. At the local level, no differing ideologies of these parties were discernible
(Hagopian 1996: 61-72).
For Collier and Collier (2002), the political polarization that occurred both in Brazil and
Chile in the 1960s represents a major commonality, and explains the breakdown of
democracy in 1964 and 1973, respectively. From my analytical point of view, the two
cases differ starkly. In Chile, intensified conflict was the result of the polarization of a
party system representative of voter preferences. Although some factions within the
Brazilian PTB radicalized, the crisis of the democratic regime in Brazil was not
concomitant to party political polarization, even if the PTB grew in strength at the expense
of the right-wing PSB.12 Rather, what lead to the breakdown of democracy was the clash
between the clientelistic logic prevalent in parliamentary elections, which successfully de-
mobilized the left, and president Goulart’s increasingly left-wing populist discourse in the
presidential arena (Bornschier 2008, von Mettenheim 1995). When Goulart, an exponent
of the PTB, started talking about land reform, the extension of the suffrage to illiterates,
and the legalization of the Communist Party, the rival traditional elites represented in the
PSD and the UDN joined forces with the military to put an end to Brazil’s democratic
experiment (Stepan 1978: 123-8, von Mettenheim 1995: 90-1, Hagopian 1996).
The unique feature of Brazil’s ensuing bureaucratic-authoritarian regime was that it
maintained party competition, albeit once again circumscribed and with the help of
officialist organizations. Growing discontent with the military regime resulted in
increasing vote shares for the official anti-regime Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB)
at the expense of the clientelistic, pro-regime ARENA. The transition to a democratic
regime thus occurred in the late 1970s as an “opening through elections” (Lamounier
1989). Put differently, ideology came to challenge clientelism, as voters were ready to
12 The fact that the two parties stopped entering coalitions may, on the other hand, be seen as an indicator of polarization (Stepan 1978).
45
chose a party on ideological grounds that was unable to provide them material rewards for
their vote. In the process of democratic transition in the 1980s, when politicians shifted
back and forth between the parties in order to remain on the winning sides, these
ideological differences were blurred, however. As the political elites maintained their
position, clientelism once more emerged as the dominant force shaping politics (Hagopian
1996, Mainwaing 1999, Power 2000, Ames 1994, 2001: Ch. 7). Opposition against the
military regime also sparked the emergence of the Workers’ Party (PT), however, Brazil’s
first externally mobilized party (see Keck 1992), which is slowly coming to transform the
party system.
Given Brazil’s record of little experience with open political competition until the
1980s, the crystallization of programmatic political alternatives is likely to be a lengthy
process. With this in mind, it is not surprising that Brazil represents an outlier in Kitschelt,
Hawkins, et al.’s (2010) analysis, exhibiting much lower levels of programmatic
structuring than would be expected based on the duration of electoral contestation since
1945 and other long-term factors. The crucial point is that competition was never really
open until the 1980s, where the PT was still forced to fight an uphill battle against its
clientelistic rivals.
Until the early 1960s, pervasive clientelism de-mobilized the citizenry in Brazil,
safeguarding the position of political and economic elites. While the match between the
political and the social balance of power was thus maintained, the exclusive reliance on
clientelism meant that the protection of elite interests was precarious, as Goulart’s populist
mobilization of the early 1960s showed. In the last two countries to be analyzed, the
mismatch between the balance of power in the political arena and in society presented a
problem from the very start, as conservative interests were unable to curtail the
mobilization of progressive forces by democratic means.
46
Mismatch between political and social balances of power: Unstable regimes in Peru and
Argentina
Peru and Argentina share with Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia the presence of a
progressive movement that was potentially hegemonic.13 Contrary to the latter countries,
however, they failed to bring about a revolution in Peru and Argentina. Instead, the
strength of these movements and the weakness of conservative forces in the electoral arena
launched a tradition of military involvement in politics, which in Argentina defended
mainly the interests of the upper classes, while the Peruvian military came to pursue a
project of its own later on.
When progressive parties representing the middle and lower classes were formed in
Peru in the 1920s, the traditional elites had no conservative party to defend their interests
in the electoral arena. Instead, they relied on the military, which played a predominant role
in the Peruvian history of the 20th century. Formed in 1924, the Popular Revolutionary
American Alliance (APRA) was to become the dominating force on the left, forging close
ties to the union movement and outflanking the Communist party, with which it competed.
When Haya de la Torre, APRA’s overpowering founding figure, did not accept the 1931
election, and instead organized a military insurrection, he “…launched the party’s tragic
tradition of violence” (Collier and Collier 2002: 151; see also Coppedge 1998: 195). The
story of following decades is adventuresome. In the absence of a conservative party, the
military intervened continuously whenever it saw the vital interests of the oligarchy as
threatened.
While APRA was allowed to run in parliamentary elections, its candidates were
prevented from assuming the presidency. The only way for APRA to have a chance in
13 In Argentina and Peru, this was party due to the fact that earlier attempts to incorporate the working class had been aborted, in Collier and Collier’s terms. Thus, when the working class was finally mobilized, this occurred in a context in which the labor movement was already much stronger than in most other countries (Collier and Collier 2002: 314).
47
governing was to moderate its programmatic stance,14 and to form alliances with right-
wing parties in order to ensure civilian rule (Collier and Collier 2002: 476-7).15 Ultimately,
however, this resulted in the adoption of rather conservative positions and in the watering
down of the party’s ideological profile. In any event, while APRA continued to play a
dominant role in the party system and was actually able to retain the loyalties of the
working class in the formal sector, it failed to move beyond its original constituencies and
to adapt to the transformations of social structure and the growth of the informal sector
(Collier and Collier 2002: 478-83). According to evidence presented by Stokes (1995: 16-
31), neither APRA, nor the Communists succeeded in supplanting the clientelistic
networks dominant in the poor urban neighborhoods, and the aggregate electoral results in
these areas did not differ from those in middle or upper-class neighborhoods. Rather,
APRA seems to have engaged in extensive patronage and clientelistic change itself
(Collier and Collier 2002: 481, Hilliker 1971: 74-113). In the context of substantial
extensions of the suffrage, new parties emerged in the 1960s, and APRA forged alliances
with strange bedfellows.
The military came to see the party system as stalemated and parties as incapable of
pursuing urgently needed reform, and decided in 1968 to pursue its own project to
modernize the country and to weaken APRA. The regime united a broad class alliance and
initially enacted progressive social reforms, including land reform, but it ultimately failed
to restructure the political system (Di Tella 2004: 100-1, Stokes 1995: 32-47, Collier and
Collier 2002: 764-5). In the constituent assembly and in the 1980 elections, the ban on
APRA was abolished. As one of Latin America’s best organized mass parties that also
14 This is remarkable, since APRA’s positions appear to have been far less radical than those of progressive movements in Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia early on. Hence, the party had concentrated its efforts on Peru’s “modern” sector, refrained from mobilizing the peasantry outside the export enclaves, and calling neither for land reform, nor for an extension of the tightly restricted suffrage (Collier and Collier 2002: 327-8). 15 Collier and Collier (2002: 477) note than in an alternative, less benevolent reading, the APRA-elite had become co-opted by the political establishment, and began to see the pursuit of power as an end in itself.
48
provides its faithful with particularistic benefits (McDonald and Ruhl 1989: 214-5, Stokes
2005: 318), APRA party continued to play an important role in politics, and won the
presidency in 1985. Peru still lacks a firmly institutionalized counter-player to APRA,
however, and consequently, the party system is weakly institutionalized. In the absence of
clear ideological divisions, clientelism is likely to play a pervasive role.
Argentina. The inability of conservative forces to defend their interests in the electoral
arena, together with the strength of the progressive challenge, have rendered democracy
extraordinarily fragile in Argentina since the 1940s. Similarly to what has been the case in
Peru, Argentina has spent roughly the same number of years under (restricted) democracy
as under authoritarian rule since the advent of mass politics until the 1990s (Gibson 1996:
25-6). Apart from this commonality, two crucial features set Argentina and Peru apart, as
the following analysis will highlight. First, faced with the threat that democracy may be
overturned, the Peronist party never moderated its programmatic position, and it did not
form alliances with political opponents. Due to Peronism’s penetration of the militant labor
movement, polarization was also maintained during phases in which the Peronist party was
banned, and it thus kept its distinctive programmatic profile in the Argentine party
landscape. Secondly, despite the early defeat of conservatism, Argentina started the era of
mass politics with a strongly institutionalized middle-class party that came to unite the
anti-Peronist opposition: the Radicals. Thus, while the mismatch between political and
social balance of power made democracy fragile, the presence of the Radical party as an
opponent to the Peronists contributed to institutionalizing the party system and to creating
lasting political identities.
With the victory of the Peronist coalition in the 1946 election, which followed the 1943
military coup in which Perón had taken part as a military officer, Conservatism was almost
49
completely marginalized. Not only did the Radical UCR come to lead the alliance that
opposed Perón, the Peronist movement actually seized part of the Conservatives’ mass
base: “Throughout the country, Perón succeeded in recruiting local conservative leaders
into his electoral alliance, both from the top leadership as well as from the cadres of local
party hacks who controlled electoral machinery in rural areas and small towns” (Gibson
1996: 62). Under the banner of “nacionalismo” and economic protectionism, Perón thus
pulled protectionist rural elites into an alliance with the urban working class and other
social groups (ibid, p. 62-6). While some small-town segments of his coalition supported
Perón due to his charisma, the movement’s redistributive economic policies and the
attainment of full employment made it attract urban working class voters exhibiting a clear
ideological profile (Madsen and Snow 1991: 102-33).16 Thus, Peronism was strongly
rooted in a class cleavage, and in the 1983 elections after re-democratization, a clear-cut
class-based profile of party support re-emerged (Madsen and Snow 1991: 134-50,
McGuire 1995: 233-6). Until after the bureaucratic-authoritarian regime that lasted until
1983, the Peronists won every election, partly due to the disunity of the opposition, but the
military intervened repeatedly to prevent them from taking power.
Although Perón himself, despite his strong anti-oligarchic rhetoric, had never proposed
land reform (Madsen & Snow 1991: 54), the reforms he initiated in favor of labor were far-
reaching, and the Peronist movement was diverse, harboring more radical and more
conservative elements. Overall, the Peronists had a clear ideological profile, and what
distinguishes the party’s strategy from that of APRA in Peru is that it never moved to the
center.17 Thus, when Perón was ousted from power and the party banned, the more
16 According to Collier and Collier (2002: 314-5), the project to incorporate the working class was one of the most extensive in terms of the scope of labor legislation, the coverage of social benefits, and the “…dramatic shift away from earlier patterns of state-labor relations to one in which, in symbolic and ideological terms, the government dramatically sided with the working class”. 17 Although Collier and Collier highlight this difference and present abundant evidence to substantiate it, it plays no role in what they seek to explain, i.e., the survival or demise of democracy in the 1960s and 1970s. Democracy constituted an “impossible game” in both cases. From the point of view of my analysis, which
50
progressive wings of the party were not expelled, as was the case in Venezuela and
Mexico. Rather, intense conflict developed between the military government and the union
movement, which remained dominated by the Peronist movement, resulting in strikes,
bombings, and sabotage (Collier and Collier 2002: 358-9, 484-97, 721-42).
Consequently, strong political identities persisted despite the narrow record of open
democratic elections, and when the military regime was toppled in the early 1980s, the pre-
coup party system re-emerged. At the same time, a more pluralist pattern emerged, as the
Peronists actually lost the 1983 presidential election to their Radicals, which once again
had come to rally all anti-Peronist voters (Di Tella 2004: 164-70). Consequently, the
political alternatives in Argentina have remained fairly stable since the 1940s, even if
clientelism plays a major role in political mobilization. While the Radicals are described
by Rueschemeyer et al. (1992: 209) as traditionally relying on clientelistic mobilization,
the Peronists’ alliance with rural elites suggests that the same applies for them as well.
With the existing evidence, it is difficult to discern precisely how large a role clientelism
played in rallying the Peronist electorate in the pre-coup period. More recent analyses
underline the increasing reliance on clientelism on the part of the Peronists in the new
democratic regime, however, which compensates for discontent in the working class
resulting from the adoption of neo-liberal reforms (Brusco et al. 2004, Stokes 2005,
Levitsky 2007).
focuses on the long-term effects of political conflict for the institutionalization and programmatic structuring of party systems, this different behavior of APRA and of the Peronist party is crucial.
51
Historical trajectories and patterns of party system institutionalization and
responsiveness since the 1980s
The preceding analysis has traced party system development until the breakdown of
democracy in the 1960s or 1970s, and further in those cases where democracy survived
despite the proliferation of military rule in Latin America. How well do the two critical
junctures that have guided the analysis explain how institutionalized and how responsive
of the preferences of voters party systems are after re-democratization in the 1980?
Whereas the first critical juncture potentially results in an institutionalized party system,
my theory posits that it is only the second that makes the system responsive to citizen
preferences. To measure party system institutionalization, I use Mainwaring and Scully’s
(1995: 17) overall measure for the period between the early 1980s and the early 1990s. The
measurement of responsiveness is hampered by a lack of data from the 1980s to measure
party positions and voter preferences. Luna and Zechmeister (2005, 2010) have conducted
an analysis of party system responsiveness in the late 1990s, however. Their study
combines data from political elites and mass surveys and covers nine countries. If
historical trajectories indeed have long-term effects, we should still be able to observe the
basic contrasts between countries at this point. More specifically, Luna and Zechmeister
(2005, 2010) measure how well parties represent voters in various systems across a
number of issue bundles including economic and religious issues, preferences for a
democratic regime, law and order, and good governance. Figure 3 thus plots Luna and
Zechmeister’s (2010: 135) “conservative score” and Mainwaring and Scully’s (1995) data
of party system institutionalization in a two-dimensional space together with a linear fit
line.
52
Figure 3: Party system institutionalization and responsiveness in the 1980s/1990s
In line with expectations, Chile and Uruguay have not only the most firmly
institutionalized, but also the most responsive party systems among the countries covered.
Both countries are situated close to the theoretical maximum on both scales. At the other
extreme, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil are characterized by a similarly low performance
both in terms of institutionalization and in terms of responsiveness. This is indeed what the
historical analysis predicts. In between, we find the cases of Colombia and Argentina. If
the relationship between party system institutionalization and responsiveness were linear,
we would expect much higher responsiveness in the case of Colombia. From the point of
view of the analysis presented in this paper, Colombia’s location makes sense: While the
conflict between Liberals and Conservatives resulted in the early institutionalization of the
party system, the subsequent curtailing of party competition resulted in a dominant two-
party system, whose actors rely heavily on clientelism, rather than distinctive programs, to
gain votes. Argentina, on the other hand, takes an intermediate position with respect to
Argentina
BoliviaBrazil
Chile
Colombia
Ecuador
Mexico
Uruguay
46
810
12
0 2 4 6 8Responsiveness of the party system to voter preferences, late 1990s
(Luna and Zechmeister 2010 “conservative score”)
Insti
tutio
naliz
ation
of t
he p
arty
syste
m in
the
1980
s an
d ea
rly 1
990s
(Main
warin
g an
d Sc
ully 1
995)
53
both measures. The strong political identities resulting from the long-term conflict between
Peronists and non-Peronists and parties’ distinct programmatic profiles clearly distinguish
the Argentine party system from those in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil. At the same time,
the limited experience with democratic elections, as well as the clientelist mobilization
pursued by the Radicals and the Peronists make Argentina display a more fluid cleavage
structure than that found in Uruguay and Chile. Finally, Mexico stands out for having a
rather institutionalized party system with low levels of responsiveness to voter preferences.
This location results from the combination of the PRI’s dominant position and in the
weakness of programmatic structuring.
Venezuela, Peru, and Paraguay are not covered by Luna and Zechmeister’s analysis due
to the dramatic transformation of the party system in the first two cases. According to
Mainwaring and Scully (1995: 17), Peru has the least institutionalized party system of all
cases considered, with a value slightly below that of Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Indeed,
this is what the analysis up to the late 1960s predicts. In Venezuela, the party system was
once highly institutionalized but collapsed in the 1990s. Coppedge (2005) attributes its
collapse exactly to the factors also identified in the my historical analysis: the lack of
responsiveness of AD and COPEI and the ebbing of the patronage resources that had
stabilized the dominant party system since 1958. Finally, Paraguay still has a very limited
record of open democratic elections, but the capacity of left-wing parties to challenge the
once dominant Colorados suggests that chances for the emergence of a responsive party
system exist at least in the long run.
54
Conclusion
There are vast differences between Latin American party systems in terms of their
responsiveness to voter preferences. The critical junctures postulated and analyzed in this
paper help to explain these differences rather well. Contemporary linkage practices are
thus rooted in long-term historical processes. The first critical juncture postulated in this
paper is situated at the turn to the 20th century, and sets countries with pluralistic elite party
systems guaranteeing the protection of elite interests apart from those in which parties are
either weakly institutionalized, or where conservative forces are regionally divided.
Competitive conservative parties existed in Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, and Paraguay, but
only the first two of these countries maintained open political competition when
progressive political actors emerged. Subsequently, only Chile and Uruguay developed
responsive mass party systems. Thus, a pluralistic pre-democratic order and the early
establishment of the rule of law, which is emphasized in various theories of
democratization from Moore (1969) to Dahl (1971), as well as in Coppedge’s (1998)
account of party system institutionalization, is not a sufficient condition for the later
formation of responsive party systems.
The second critical juncture is constituted by what I have termed the “polarization
phase”, where ideological conflict results in lasting political identities and strong loyalties
to political parties. These alignments are then perpetuated by ongoing conflict in the party
system, socializing new voters into the established structure of conflict. Ideological
polarization and the formation of strong political identities to a certain degree crowd out
clientelistic forms of mobilization. While clientelistic and programmatic appeals may be
compatible to a certain degree, it is obvious that the pervasive use of clientelism inhibits
citizens from making their voting choices depend on parties’ differing policy platforms.
55
While ideological conflicts were certainly present before the polarization phase, religious
cleavages tended to have become pacified by the beginning of the 20th century. What is
more, they were more or less off the political agenda when larger segments of the
electorate were enfranchised, and thus mass loyalties based on religion only developed in
few countries, Chile being the prime example. The polarization phase was thus shaped by
the emergence of new parties that sought to change the political status quo. I have termed
these parties “progressive”, rather than left-wing because they sometimes meshed Fascist
and Socialist ideas, such as Bolivia’s MNR, and because one of the traditional parties first
introduced the first move to the left in Uruguay and Colombia.
The progressive challenge occurred at different points in time, partially influenced by
the timing of development and the subsequent formation of the urban middle and working
classes. As a result, the first instance of polarization occurred early in some cases, and later
in others. The forerunner was Uruguay in the first decade of the 20th century, while the
progressive challenge materialized much later in Colombia, despite the striking similarity
of party systems in the two contexts. From the point of view of the political analysis that I
have presented, these differences in timing and the differing social bases that progressive
forces mobilized are largely irrelevant.
However, in those cases where progressive parties or movements actually won the
upper hand against conservative forces or the old elites – an incidence I have referred to as
revolution – this was clearly due to the broader social class alliance that movements in
Mexico, Venezuela, and Bolivia rested upon. In political terms, the outcome was that
pluralism – which depends on some sort of balance of power between conservative and
progressive forces – could not be maintained. The logic of party systems that subsequently
developed was deeply rooted in the distribution of particularistic benefits, failing to be
responsive of the preferences of citizens. While the Bolivian party system never
56
institutionalized, those in Mexico and Venezuela were first dominant, but de-
institutionalized in the long run. This indicates that only responsive party systems, which
have the capacity to adapt to changing social and political contexts, are likely to remain
stable over long periods of time.
Where polarization was aborted, clientelism was often part and parcel of a strategy of
de-mobilization, and thus remained pervasive. The most obvious case here is Brazil,
because the challenge by progressive movements was potentially strong in that country,
while it was much weaker in Ecuador. Finally, the contrast between Peru and Argentina
once again highlights the importance of political polarization for the formation of
responsive party systems. In Peru, APRA itself ended polarization by moving into
conservative terrain in order to avoid the military taking over power. Not only did this
prove illusive, it also resulted in the failure of a responsive party system to develop. In
Argentina, on the other hand, polarization remained strong throughout the 1940 to the
1970s, but parties played a less important role because their electoral weakness made
conservative forces rely on the military to defend their interests, while the Peronists were
often banned from participating in elections. Nonetheless, the antagonism between the
Radicals and the Peronists is rooted both in history and in the class structure. The
Argentine party system thus came closest to those of Uruguay and Chile in offering
distinctive policy platforms and ensuring responsiveness to voter preferences when
democracy was restored in the early 1980s.
This paper has sought to explain the predominant linkage type on which party systems
rested in the 1980s, when Latin America experienced a wave of re-democratization. In
fact, the military dictatorships had largely failed in superseding the dynamics of party
competition that were at least partially responsible for the coups of the 1960s and 1970s.
Where the party system had been responsive before, it quickly regained responsiveness
57
after re-democratization, even if political divides over democracy appeared in Chile and
partially also in Uruguay. The other countries likewise showed great continuity – not so
much in terms of the parties making up the party system, but in that clientelistic forms of
voter mobilization predominated. The data presented in the final section to validate the
historical analysis shows that party systems in Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil, and Mexico
continued to lack responsiveness in the late 1990s.
Nonetheless, several new dynamics are visible in more recent years, which will be
studied in a later stage of the project of which this paper is part (Bornschier 2011). Thus,
Latin America’s recent “left turn” may have profound impacts on party systems. New
movements combining leftist and indigenous components have emerged in Bolivia and
Ecuador. In Venezuela, the polarization created by Chávez’ ascendency to power may lead
opposition forces to unite, possibly resulting in a new, economic line of conflict emerging.
Most important in terms of the formation of programmatic linkages is the evolution in
Brazil and Mexico, however. Indeed, the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) seems to explicitly
aim at changing the dominant ways of voter mobilization by refusing to make clientelistic
appeals (c.f. Samuels 2006). Despite a continuing practice of corruption under the new
government, the PT appears to exert pressure on the established parties to develop more
clear-cut ideological profiles as well. Recent research indicates that parties are becoming
more cohesive in Brazil (Hunter 2007, Hagopian et al. 2009). Similarly, opposition parties
are pushing the Mexican party system in a more programmatic direction (Greene 2007,
2008). Thus, apart from the propitious path that leads through the two critical junctures
that were analyzed in this paper, there appears to be a second, alternative route to
programmatic party competition – a route that is open even to those countries that lack the
favourable historical circumstances of the forerunners in terms of democratic
responsiveness.
58
References
Abente, D. (1995). A Party System in Transition: The Case of Paraguay. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 298-320). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Alonso, P. (2000). Between Revolution and the Ballot Box. The Origins of the Argentine Radical Party in the 1890s. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Altman, D. (2008). Collegiate Executives and Direct Democracy in Switzerland and Uruguay: Similar Institutions, Opposite Political Goals, Distinct Results. Swiss Political Science Review, 14(3), 483-520.
Ames, B. (1994). The Reverse Coattails Effect: Local Party Organization in the 1989 Brazilian Presidential Elections. American Journal of Political Science, 88(1), 95-111.
Ames, B. (2001). The Deadlock of Democracy in Brazil. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Archer, R. P. (1990). The Transition from Traditional to Broker Clientelism in Colombia: Political Stability and Social Unrest. Working Paper #140, Kellog Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, July 1990.
Archer, R. P. (1995). Party Strength and Weakness in Colombia's Besigned Democracy. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 164-199). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Bartolini, S., & Mair, P. (1990). Identity, competition, and electoral availability. The stabilization of European electorates 1885-1985. Cambridge, New York: Cambridge University Press.
Bornschier, S. (2008). Demokratie, Sozialstruktur und Parteiensysteme in Lateinamerika. Brasilien in vergleichender Perspektive. Saarbrücken: VDM.
Bornschier, S. (2009). Cleavage Politics in Old and New Democracies. Living Reviews in Democracy, 1(1).
Bornschier, S. (2010). Cleavage Politics and the Populist Right. The New Cultural Conflict in Western Europe. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Bornschier, S. (2011). Democratization and the Emergence of Responsive Party Systems in Latin America: A Research Project, Prepared for the Workshop “The Formation of Ideologically Based Party Systems” IPSA-ECPR Joint Conference, São Paulo, February 16 to 19, 2011.
Brusco, V., Nazareno, M., & Stokes, S. C. (2004). Vote Buying in Argentina. Latin American Research Review, 39(2), 66-88.
Caramani, D. (2004). The Nationalization of Politics. The Formation of National Electorates and Party Systems in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chalmers, D. A. (1977). Parties and Society in Latin America. In S. W. Schmidt, L. Guasti, C. H. Landé & J. C. Scott (Eds.), Friends, Followers, and Factions. A Reader in Political Clientelism (pp. 401-421). Berkeley: University of California Press.
59
Chavez, R. B. (2003). The Construction of the Rule of Law in Argentina: A Tale of Two Provinces. Comparative Politics, 35(4), 417-437.
Collier, D., & Collier, R. B. (2002 [1991]). Shaping the Political Arena. Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Notre Dame, IND: University of Notre Dame Press, Second Edition.
Collier, D., & Levitsky, S. (1997). Democracy with Adjectives: Conceptual Innovation in Comparative Research. World Politics, 49(3), 430-451.
Conaghan, C. M. (1995). Politicians Against Parties: Discord and Disconnection in Ecuador's Party System. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 434-458). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Conaghan, C. M. (2008). Ecuador: Correa's Plebiscitary Presidency. Journal of Democracy, 19(2), 46-60.
Coppedge, M. (1994). Strong Parties and Lame Ducks. Presidential Partyarchy and Factionalism in Venezuela. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Coppedge, M. (1998). The Evolution of Latin American Party Systems. In S. Mainwaring & A. Valenzuela (Eds.), Politics, Society, and Democracy: Latin America (pp. 171-206). Boulder: Westview Press.
Coppedge, M. (2005). Explaining Democratic Deterioration in Venezuela through Nested Inference. In F. Hagopian & S. Mainwaring (Eds.), The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America. Advances and Setbacks (pp. 289-316). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coser, L. A. (1956). The Functions of Social Conflict. An examination of the concept of social conflict and its use in empirical sociological research. New York: The Free Press.
Dahl, R. A. (1971). Polyarchy. Participation and Opposition. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Di Tella, T. S. (2004). History of Political Parties in Twentieth-Century Latin America. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
Diamond, L. (2002). Elections Without Democracy. Thinking About Hybrid Regimes. Journal of Democracy, 13(2), 21-35.
Dix, R. H. (1989). Cleavage Structures and Party Systems in Latin America. Comparative Politics, 22(1), 23-37.
Gamarra, E. A., & Malloy, J. M. (1995). The Patrimonial Dynamics of Party Politics in Bolivia. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 399-433). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Geddes, B. (1994). Politician's Dilemma. Building State Capacity in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Gibson, E. L. (1996). Class and Conservative Parties. Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
González, L. E. (1991). Political Structures and Democracy in Uruguay. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.
60
González, L. E. (1995). Continuity and Change in the Uruguayan Party System. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 138-163). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Greene, K. F. (2007). Why Dominant Parties Lose. Mexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Greene, K. F. (2008). Dominant Party Strategy and Democratization. American Journal of Political Science, 52(1), 16-31.
Gunther, R., & Diamond, L. (2003). Species of Political Parties: A New Typology. Party Politics, 9(2), 167-199.
Hagopian, F. (1996). Traditional Politics and Regime Change in Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hagopian, F., Gervasoni, C., & Moraes, J. A. (2009). From Patronage to Program. The Emergence of Party-Oriented Legislators in Brazil. Comparative Political Studies, 42(3), 360-391.
Hawkins, K. A., Kitschelt, H., & Llamazares, I. (2010). Programmatic Structuration around Religion and Political Regime. In H. Kitschelt, K. A. Hawkins, J. P. Luna, G. Rosas & E. J. Zechmeister (Eds.), Latin American Party Systems (pp. 236-278). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Hilliker, G. (1971). The Politics of Reform in Peru: The Aprista and other Mass Parties of Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Hunter, W. (2007). The Normalization of an Anomaly. The Workers' Party in Brazil. World Politics, 59, 440-475.
Karl, T. L. (1986). Petroleum and Political Pacts: The Transition to Democracy in Venezuela. In G. O'Donnell, P. C. Schmitter & L. Whitehead (Eds.), Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Latin America (pp. 196-219). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Keck, M. E. (1992). The Workers' Party and Democratization in Brazil. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Kitschelt, H. (2000). Linkages Between Citizens and Politicians in Democratic Polities. Comparative Political Studies, 33(6/7), 845-879.
Kitschelt, H., Freeze, K., Kolev, K., & Wang, Y.-T. (2009). Measuring Democratic Accountability: An Initial Report on an Emerging Data Set. Revista de Ciencia Política, 29(3), 741-773.
Kitschelt, H., Hawkins, K. A., Luna, J. P., Rosas, G., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2010). Long-Term Influences on the Structuring of Latin American Party Systems. In H. Kitschelt, K. A. Hawkins, J. P. Luna, G. Rosas & E. J. Zechmeister (Eds.), Latin American Party Systems (pp. 177-208). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Kitschelt, H., Luna, J. P., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2010). Programmatic Structuration and Democratic Performance. In H. Kitschelt, K. A. Hawkins, J. P. Luna, G. Rosas & E. J. Zechmeister (Eds.), Latin American Party Systems (pp. 279-305). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kitschelt, H., & Wilkinson, S. I. (2007). Citizen-politician linkages: an introduction. In H. Kitschelt & S. I. Wilkinson (Eds.), Patrons, Clients and Policies. Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (pp. 1-49). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
61
Klein, H. S. (1969). Parties and Political Change in Bolivia, 1880-1952. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lamounier, B. (1989). Authoritarian Brazil Revisited: The Impact of Elections on the Abertura. In A. Stepan (Ed.), Democratizing Brazil: Problems of Transition and Consolidation (pp. 43-79). New York: Oxford University Press.
Lamounier, B. (1990). Brazil: Inequality Against Democracy. In L. Diamond, J. J. Linz & S. M. Lipset (Eds.), Politics in Developing Countries. Comparing Experiences with Democracy (pp. 87-134). Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Langston, J., & Morgenstern, S. (2009). Campaigning in an Electoral Authoritarian Regime: The Case of Mexico. Comparative Politics, 41(2), 165-181.
Levitsky, S. (2007). From populism to clientelism? The transformation of labor-based party linkages in Latin America. In H. Kitschelt & S. I. Wilkinson (Eds.), Patrons, Clients, and Policies. Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition (pp. 206-226). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Levitsky, S., & Way, L. A. (2010). Why Democracy Needs a Level Playing Field. Journal of Democracy, 21(1), 57-68.
Lipset, S. M., & Rokkan, S. (1967). Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction. In S. M. Lipset & S. Rokkan (Eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments (pp. 1-64). New York-London: The Free Press-Collier-Macmillan.
Luna, J. P. (n.d.). Unstable Equilibriums: Party-Voter Linkages in Contemporary Latin America. A Comparative Analysis of Chile and Uruguay.Unpublished manuscript, Instituto de Ciencia Politica, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Luna, J. P., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2005). Political Representation in Latin America. A Study of Elite-Mass Congruence in Nine Countries. Comparative Political Studies, 38(4), 388-416.
Luna, J. P., & Zechmeister, E. J. (2010). Political Representation in Latin America. In H. Kitschelt, K. A. Hawkins, J. P. Luna, G. Rosas & E. J. Zechmeister (Eds.), Latin American Party Systems (pp. 119-144). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Madsen, D., & Snow, P. G. (1991). The Charismatic Bond. Political Behaviour in Time of Crisis. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mainwaring, S. (1999). Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization: The Case of Brazil. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mainwaring, S., & Scully, T. R. (1995). Introduction: Party Systems in Latin America. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 1-34). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Mainwaring, S., & Torcal, M. (2006). Party System Institutionalization and Party System Theory after the Third Wave of Democratization. In R. S. Katz & W. Crotty (Eds.), Handbook of Party Politics (pp. 204-227). London: Sage.
Mainwaring, S., & Zoco, E. (2007). Political Sequences and the Stabilization of Interparty Competition. Electoral Volatility in Old and New Democracies. Party Politics, 13(2), 155-178.
Mair, P. (1997). Party System Change. Approaches and Interpretations. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
62
Mair, P. (2001). The freezing hypothesis. An evaluation. In L. Karvonen & S. Kuhnle (Eds.), Party Systems and Voter Alignments Revisited (pp. 27-44). London and New York: Routledge.
Martz, J. D. (1964). Dilemmas in the Study of Latin American Parties. The Journal of Politics, 26(3), 509-531.
Martz, J. D. (1997). The Politics of Clientelism. Democracy and State in Colombia. New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers.
McDonald, R. H., & Ruhl, J. M. (1989). Party Politics and Elections in Latin America. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
McGuire, J. (1995). Political Parties and Democracy in Argentina. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 200-246). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Merkel, W. (2004). Embedded and Defective Democracies. Democratization, 11(5), 33-58.
Merkel, W., Puhle, H.-J., & Croissant, A. (2003). Defekte Demokratie: Theorien und Probleme. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Merkel, W., Puhle, H.-J., & Croissant, A. (2006). Defekte Demokratien in Osteuropa, Ostasien und Lateinamerika. Opladen: Leske + Budrich.
Middlebrook, K. J. (2000). Conservative Parties, Elite Representation, and Democracy in Latin America. In K. J. Middlebrook (Ed.), Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America (pp. 1-50). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Moore, B. (1966). The Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy. Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World. Boston: Beacon Press.
O'Donnell, G. (1994). Delegative Democracy. Journal of Democracy, 5(1), 55-69.
Pitkin, H. (1967). The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Pizarro Leongómez, E. (2006). Giants with Feet of Clay: Political Parties in Colombia. In S. Mainwaring, A. M. Bejarano & E. Pizarro Leongómez (Eds.), The Crisis of Democratic Representation in the Andes (pp. 78-99). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Powell, G. B., Jr. (2000). Elections as Instruments of Democracy. Majoritarian and Proportional Visions. New Haven/London: Yale University Press.
Power, T. J. (2000). The Political Right in Postauthoritarian Brazil. Elites, Institutions, and Democratization. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Remmer, K. L. (1984). Party Competition in Argentina and Chile. Political Recruitment and Public Policy, 1890-1930. Lincoln: University of Nabraska Press.
Remmer, K. L. (1985). Redemocratization and the Impact of Authoritarian Rule in Latin America. Comparative Politics, 17(3), 253-275.
Ríos-Figueroa, J., & Pozas-Loyo, A. (2010). Enacting Constitutionalism: The Origins of Independent Judical Institutions in Latin America. Comparative Politics, 42(3), 293-311.
Roberts, K. M. (2003). Social Correlates of Party System Demise and Populist Resurgence in Venezuela. Latin American Politics and Society, 45(3), 35-57.
63
Rokkan, S. (1999). State Formation, Nation-Building, and Mass Politics in Europe: The Theory of Stein Rokkan, Based on His Collected Works, edited by Peter Flora with Stein Kuhnle and Derek Urwin. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rueschemeyer, D., Stephens, E. H., & Stephens, J. D. (1992). Capitalist Development and Democracy. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Samuels, D. (2006). Sources of Mass Partisanship in Brazil. Latin American Politics and Society, 48(2), 1-27.
Sartori, G. (1968). The Sociology of Parties. A Critical Review. In O. Stammer (Ed.), Party Systems, Party Organizations, and the Politics of New Masses, Beiträge zur 3. Internationalen Konferenz über Vergleichende Politische Soziologie, Berlin, 15.- 20. Januar 1968 (pp. 1-25). Berlin: Institut für politische Wissenschaft an der Freien Universität Berlin.
Sartori, G. (1976). Parties and party systems. A framework for analysis. Cambridge, London: Cambridge University Press.
Scully, T. R. (1992). Rethinking the Center. Party Politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Chile. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Scully, T. R. (1995). Reconstituting Party Politics in Chile. In S. Mainwaring & T. R. Scully (Eds.), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America (pp. 100-137). Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Shefter, M. (1977). Party and Patronage: Germany, England, and Italy. Politics & Society, 7, 403-451.
Shefter, M. (1993). Political Parties and the State. The American Historical Experience. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Skidmore, T. E. (1967). Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964. An Experiment in Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Smith, P. H. (1978). The Breakdown of Democracy in Argentina, 1916-30. In J. J. Linz & A. Stepan (Eds.), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Latin America (pp. 3-27). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Stepan, A. (1978). Political Leadership and Regime Breakdown: Brazil. In J. J. Linz & A. Stepan (Eds.), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes (pp. 110-137). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Stokes, S. C. (1995). Cultures in Conflict. Social Movements and the State in Peru. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Stokes, S. C. (2005). Perverse Accountability: A Formal Model of Machine Politics with Evidence from Argentina. American Political Science Review, 99(3), 315-325.
Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic Interactionalism. A Social Structural Version. Menlo Park, Readings: Benjamin/Cummings Publishing Country.
Stryker, S. (2000). Identity Competition: Key to Differential Social Movement Participation? In S. Stryker, T. J. Owens & R. W. White (Eds.), Self, Identity, and Social Movements (pp. 21-39). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Tóka, G. (1998). Party Appeals and Voter Loyalty in New Democracies. Political Studies, XLVI, 589-610.
Valenzuela, A. (1977). Political Brokers in Chile: Local Government in a Centralized Polity. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.
64
Van Cott, D. L. (2000). Party System Development and Indigenous Populations in Latin America: The Bolivian Case. Party Politics, 6(2), 155-174.
von Mettenheim, K. (1995). The Brazilian Voter. Mass Politics in Democratic Transition, 1974-1986. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Weyland, K. (1996). Democracy Without Equity. Failures of Reform in Brazil. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Whitehead, L. (2001). The Emergence of Democracy in Bolivia. In J. Crabtree & L. Whitehead (Eds.), Towards Democratic Viability: The Bolivian Experience (pp. 21-40). Basingstoke: Palgrave.
Wilde, A. W. (1978). Conversations among Genlemen: Oligarchical Democracy in Colombia. In J. J. Linz & A. Stepan (Eds.), The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Latin America (pp. 28-81). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.