1. Party Organization and Political Survival in South America.
- Author
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Seawright, Jason
- Subjects
- *
ELITE (Social sciences) , *POLITICAL parties , *ELECTIONS - Abstract
Explanations for voter decision-making during the process of party-system collapse in Peru (during the1980s) and Venezuela (during the 1980s and 1990s) raise two major questions about party organizationaldynamics. Why did traditional parties fail to shift their ideological appeals in such a way as to end apattern of ideological under-representation that drove voters to embrace outsider parties? Why weremany of the traditional parties in Peru and Venezuela unable to prevent corruption perceptions fromeroding party identification?This paper uses evidence from a new survey of local political party leaders in Argentina, Peru,and Venezuela to argue that the answers to these two questions lie in patterns of party organization.Electorally suboptimal ideological positioning can be explained by the relatively high intra-party powerof often ideologically extremist local leaders in the collapsed parties. Differences in the vulnerability ofparties' identifiers to corruption concerns, in turn, are explained by whether the party channels patronageprimarily through the state apparatus or through the party organization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2007