Latin American Party Systems

by Herbert Kitschelt , Kirk A. Hawkins , Juan Pablo Luna , Guillermo Rosas , Elizabeth J. Zechmeister

• ISBN13: 9780521114950
• ISBN10: 0521114950
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-02-22
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Political parties provide a crucial link between voters and politicians. This link takes a variety of forms in democratic regimes, from the organization of political machines built around clientelistic networks to the establishment of sophisticated programmatic parties. Latin American Party Systems provides a novel theoretical argument to account for differences in the degree to which political party systems in the region were programmatically structured at the end of the twentieth century. Based on a diverse array of indicators and surveys of party legislators and public opinion, the book argues that learning and adaptation through fundamental policy innovations are the main mechanisms by which politicians build programmatic parties. Marshalling extensive evidence, the book's analysis shows the limits of alternative explanations and substantiates a sanguine view of programmatic competition, nevertheless recognizing that this form of party system organization is far from ubiquitous and enduring in Latin America.

Table of Contents

Introduction: party competition in Latin America

Patterns of programmatic party competition in Latin America

Describing Programmatic Structuration

Issues, ideologies, and partisan divides: imprints of programmatic structure in Latin American legislatures

Left-right semantics as a facilitator of programmatic structuring

Political representation in Latin America

Ideological cohesion of political parties in Latin America

Causes and Correlates of Programmatic Party System Structuration: Explaining Cross-National Diversity

Long-term influences on the structuring of Latin American Party systems

Democratic politics and political economy since the 1980s: transforming the programmatic structure of Latin American party systems?

Programmatic structuration around religion and political regime

Programmatic structuration and democratic performance

Conclusion

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