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The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the dynamics and possible consequences of this leftist trend in Latin American politics considering the interplay between democratic transitions and market policies implementation.Latin American politiesâ??political parties, social movements or networksâ??have in recent times moved towards different forms of leftist options, whether in discourse or in policy making. Although the initial transitions from authoritarian to democratic régimes were coupled by more center-to-right régimes, the present leftist trend should come as no surprise. Democracy was reestablished almost at the same time as pro-market policies following the then dominant Washington consensus were implemented. Almost two decades after these policies were launched, their basic promise of increased welfare for all citizens has not been fulfilled. Although social, economic and cultural inequalities are deeply rooted in Latin American societies and were already notorious well before the Washington Consensus, it is more or less a generalized impression that neoliberal policies have aggravated these inequalities. Even if there is still debate on their precise impacts on inequality, poverty and economic growth, what can be said beyond contestation is that strengthening democracy has made social inequalities more apparent, public policy responses more transparent, and hence political representation more accountable. Secondly, expectations concerning high rates of economic growth have not been met in any country in the region, except for Chile. The public's impression of policies largely failing to respond to increasingly visible social inequalities has triggered a shift of political preferences towards the left, which is evidenced by recent elections as well as the general discourse in the political debates throughout the region. The purpose of this paper is to develop a deeper understanding of the underlying logic and possible consequences of this leftist trend in Latin American politics. In doing so, I address the current debate on populism and the extent to which it poses a threat to democracy. This debate has been obscured by extreme views that either condemn all forms of policies that seek to confront inequalities or hail such policy efforts blindly. I argue that this debate needs a more nuanced examination of the specific institutional characteristics of populism in contemporary Latin American democracies. As Alexis Tocqueville works remind us, during times of changeâ??even radical onesâ??there are important strings of continuity that ought to be considered because they are crucial determinants of potential restorations. The de facto governance structures in modern Latin America are often shaped by traditional relationships between members of the oligarchy rather than by recent political reforms. Culture and its norms continue to shape interactions in contemporary Latin American politics. Various paths are being pursued to overcome the crises related to governance structures, the vulnerability of governing coalitions, and mechanisms of representation in Latin America. However, success in pursuing these paths requires addressing the major issue of inequality. This takes us back to another of Tocqueville's main concerns. As Vincent Ostrom put it, "Tocqueville's task in Democracy in America was to understand the American efforts to organize a republican system of government and to determine whether it offered a promise of maintaining liberty under conditions of equality." ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses institutional analysis to explore why some countries in Latin America have been able to overcome longstanding rivalries to develop cooperative relations over the last twenty years, while others failed in similar efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The third wave of democracy (Huntington 1991) ushered in a substantial dedication to the discovery of factors promoting democratic consolidation in developing nations. One of the many factors which has been theorized to contribute to democratic consolidation and stability is the extent to which political parties are institutionalized. Samuel Huntington (1968) noted the necessity of political institutionalization in promoting political stability. Early research such as Ruhl (1975) examined the role of executive and legislative institutionalization in assessing the empirical accuracy of Huntington’s gap hypothesis. Recent research, including but not limited to McDonald and Ruhl (1989) and Mainwaring and Scully (1995) has focused on the importance of political parties as institutions, though often in a much less systematic methodological manner. This paper proposes to examine the validity of Huntington’s gap hypothesis using political party institutionalization as the relevant measure of political institutionalization. The data collected on political parties (Janda 1980), which is employed to test this hypothesis pertain to the second wave of democracy in Latin America. Specifically, factor analysis is used to create multifaceted measures of party institutionalization, distribution, and social mobilization. These factor scores are then subsequently analyzed through Ordinary Least Squares Regression. The results suggest the relevance of party institutionalization, given a relatively small n, support the relevance of parties in past democratic experience of Latin America and encourage future systematic collection of data related party institutionalization in the more recent wave of democracy in Latin America. However, economic measures are have a much greater impact on levels of instability [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Survey after survey finds Latin Americans trust political parties less than any other political, economic, and social institution or actor. Do the low marks citizens give political parties come chiefly from concerns over integrity, competence, or responsiveness? Stated in pedagogical terms, what “rubrics” do citizens employ to evaluate the trustworthiness of political parties? To appreciate the consequences of low party trust in Latin America we must know more about the criteria upon which citizens in the region judge party trustworthiness. This study maps the subjective rubrics of party trustworthiness of over 180 subjects in Chile and Argentina using a Q-methodological approach. Considering the distinct paths of party system development in the two cases, one would expect little empirical overlap in the way these subjects judge parties. Nonetheless, in each case three distinct rubrics of party trustworthiness are found, and these rubrics exhibit a high degree of cross-case congruence. The MPSA conference is a crucial step towards the dissemination and publication of this research, defended as part of my dissertation in 2008. The paper would fit well on panels on political culture in Latin America or political trust more broadly. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In light of the recent victories of left-wing parties in Brazil (2002), Ecuador (2002), Chile (2000), Uruguay (first round of the 1999 national election) and Venezuela (1999), a lot of confusion has arisen around the explanation of the shift toward left parties in Latin America. Are voters just voting against the incumbents’ parties that have produced bad economic results, are they voting against market-oriented reforms, or is the electorate becoming leftist in ideology? This paper analyzes one of these cases: the electoral change in Uruguay. By looking at public opinion data collected right before the four post-authoritarian democratic elections (1984, 1989, 1994 and 1999), it explains the changes in the determinants of the vote through time. Economic evaluations in their four forms (retrospective pocketbook, retrospective sociotropic, prospective pocketbook, and prospective sociotropic), ideological preference, and the social bases of voting are incorporated in a model to account for the change in Uruguayans voters’ behavior. On one side, the paper contributes to make sense of the recent increase of leftist vote in Latin America; on the other side, it tests the economic voting theory that has been noticeably proved in the stable economic and political contexts of the U.S. and Western Europe, on one developing country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerous observers have noted the recent trends of increased voter abstention, reduced confidence in politicians and political parties in decline. Such complaints are levied against the advanced democracies of Europe, their post-communist neighbors, the United States, and Latin America. Some use the term “anti-politics” to capture these apparently global phenomena that affect new and old democracies alike. This usage includes everything from relatively benign conditions of voter apathy to the more consequential loss of regime legitimacy. Whatever the specific symptom, they reflect varying degrees of negative public attitudes toward politics. Along with the rise of anti-politics, particularly in the 1990s, came a resurgence of populism. Several right-wing populists emerged in Europe, at times capturing surprisingly large shares of the popular vote. In Latin America, so-called neopopulists generated discussions of delegative democracy, hyperpresidentialism, illiberal democracy and so forth. Populist leaders of all stripes tend to exploit domestic problems to their own advantage. They play on the complaints of common citizens and blame the nation’s rulers from causing the hardships. As such, their efforts and rhetoric could be described as “anti-political.” Yet this raises an interesting question: what, exactly, is the relationship of anti-politics to populism? Are these merely two terms that describe the same phenomena, or are they analytically distinct? This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between populism and anti-politics. It enters into the conceptual discussion of populism—offering a new definition of populism as a political movement, rather than a style or strategy and so forth—and argues that anti-politics is best considered as a means of securing support. That is, if populism is not in itself a political strategy, then anti-politics must be the strategy populist leaders use. Although one can conceive of non-populists using anti-political strategies, it is difficult to conceive of populists not relying on anti-politics. Populists of all stripes rely on it. The classic populists in Latin America rose in reaction to the oligarchical parties that dominated politics at the time, and infused their messages with nationalist rhetoric. Neopopulists of the 1990s similarly reacted to the so-called political class that seemed aloof and removed from the problems of ordinary citizens. In these, as well as with the agrarian populism in the United States and the right wing populism in Europe, the effort to mobilize support includes the claim that the political system is not working properly, that the interests of ordinary citizens are ignored, and without some big changes the status quo will remain. In all of these cases the predominant argument in favor of the change is that the system needs fixing. Populists claim to offer an appropriate solution. This paper will present the logic behind this conceptualization and explore their relationships in the cases of Peru and Venezuela, with an eye toward providing an inter-regional comparative framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the conditions under which party leadership and legislators successfully modify the legislature's formal internal rules of order. Given the historical instability and fluctuations between democratic and authoritarian rule in Latin America, constitutional design of institutions is one of the most significant considerations when democratic rule is established. Numerous Latin American countries recently negotiated transitions from authoritarian to democratic rule. To be successful, these negotiated transitions required compromise from both democratic supporters and the exiting authoritarian rulers. The capacity of legislators and parties to make policy is in part determined by the organization of the legislature in which they work. Understanding what motivates legislators and party leaders to pursue changes in the legislature's rules of order is important to understanding how one of the key democratic institutions operates, which in turn influences the legitimacy of democratic rule, particularly whether legislators will be able to represent the people who elected them. Chamber rules offer stability that permits the legislature to conduct its business without debating procedures constantly.

How do electoral reforms affect different political parties? In this paper, I study the impact of electoral reforms on the electoral performance of Latin American traditional political parties. I argue that the institutional reforms harm the parties particularly when their internal structures prevent them to respond appropriately to the new institutional setting. In other words, parties’ internal characteristics (e.g. degree of centralization) mediate the effects that the reforms cause in their electoral performance. During the 1980s and 1990s, most countries in the region introduced changes to their electoral systems. By the mid 2000s, most traditional parties increased their degrees of fragmentation and volatility, though in different degrees and at different paces. In this paper I analyze the causes of this pattern. I study the impact of diverse and sometimes opposite reforms to electoral systems on the electoral performance of individual parties, and I explore the role that parties’ internal structures play on their ability to respond to a new institutional environment. The analysis includes all Latin American traditional parties and uses data from every legislative election in the region between 1978 and 2006. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an explanation for the shortness of multiparty coalitions in some Latin American countries. It shows that short-lived and shifting legislative coalitions are more likely in regionally-fragmented party systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I explore the relationship between public support for two closely related yet distinct objects and the stability of democratic regimes. Despite the presumed significance of public support for sustaining democracy, there has been relatively little systematic analysis of the relationship. A cursory review of the literature and survey data on Latin America paints a paradoxical image of public opinion concerning democracy in the region: people’s support for democracy goes hand in hand with high levels of political cynicism and dissatisfaction. Furthermore, the preliminary analysis of the Venezuelan case suggests that contrary to the conviction that public support for democracy could act as an effective deterrent against antidemocratic forces, the existence of the paradox may threaten the very stability of democratic regimes. When voters support democracy but lack confidence in democratic institutions, particularly political parties, they may withdraw from the act of voting or stop identifying with political parties, making the rise of antidemocratic leaders more likely. Thus, the study suggests that without trust in key political institutions, democratic regimes may have difficulty ensuring political stability and, in some cases, may not survive. The paper draws on Venezuelan public opinion polls and electoral data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains the emergence of populist parties? Emphasizing populist parties’ universal reliance upon strong leaders and aggrieved electorates, this paper argues that populism will flourish under conditions that simultaneously promote voter discontent and the rise of charismatic leaders. It proposes that populist parties emerge as a function of decreasing party system nationalization and institutionalization. Party system nationalization determines the concentration of political losers in the electorate and institutionalization determines the ease with which populist leaders can mobilize. The model predicts three broad outcomes. First, in systems with low nationalization and low institutionalization, uneven party returns result in exclusive benefits distribution and produce more aggrieved voters, and strong leaders can quickly emerge to appeal to them. Second, populist parties are not expected to emerge in systems where both nationalization and institutionalization are high. Third, in systems where nationalization and institutionalization are incongruent, populist party emergence is conditional on exogenous political or economic shocks. These propositions are empirically tested with data on 100 political parties in 25 countries. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies explore explanations of electoral volatility, but most focus on country-level volatility, overlooking important and divergent explanations of volatility at the party level. In this paper, I first show that patterns of system and party level volatility do not parallel one another, and then use that finding to argue that the two types of volatility require different explanatory models. I find that while system-level volatility decreases with the age of party system, party-level electoral volatility increases with the age of the party. Moreover, while political scandals, neo-liberal economic reforms, and polarization/extremism do not affect system-level volatility, these variables do affect party-level volatility. The results also suggest a non-linear and interactive relationship between ideological extremism, incumbency, and volatility. I test these hypotheses on 24 legislative elections in 8 Latin American countries during the 1980s and 2000. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does party nationalization shape the budgetary process and the structure of public spending? In this paper I examine the consequences of party nationalization on the political budget cycles in Latin America and argue that there exists a strong but non-linear relationship among static nationalization (the degree in which political parties’ support is consistent across the country), dynamic nationalization (similarity of the change in that support across electoral districts), and the government’s ability to control fiscal deficits. I build a simple formal model of policy formation in the context of proportional representation systems to explain the evolution of fiscal policy in Latin American countries between 1990 and 2006. The model predicts and empirical evidence confirms that where party systems are weakly nationalized on both scales, there are larger fiscal deficits and increasing spending because transaction costs associated with fiscal structure are higher. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical and rational choice theories of institutions predict that constitutions should become more stable the longer they remain in force. Comparative evidence, however, suggests that in most regions of the world constitutions are frequently replaced and substantially amended. This paper explores the conditions under which political actors perceive that the costs of maintaining existing constitutional arrangements are higher than the costs of initiating a process of constitutional change. It argues that factors exogenous and endogenous to the constitution trigger this process. Exogenous factors refer to sudden shifts in the distribution of political and institutional resources among the main political parties. Endogenous factors relate to political crises that can be traced to the particular design of the existing constitution. The argument is supported by an event-history analysis of cross-national data on constitutional change in Latin America and the study of recent processes of constitutional revision in Argentina, Colombia and Ecuador. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political parties tend to nationalize over time? Caramani (2000, 2004) uses constituent-level voting data to empirically support the phenomenon of party nationalization, or the progressive national integration of electorates and party systems, in Western Europe. I argue that parties in some developing democracies exhibit a different pattern of evolution as a result of distinct economic, geographic, and institutional factors. Parties tend to nationalize when countries are more geographically unified, the electorate is more economically homogenous, and electoral rules discourage the cultivation of a personal vote. Conversely, parties tend to regionalize when their electorate suffers from geographic divisions, economic inequality, and electoral rules that provide incentives for a personal vote. In this paper, I use legislative electoral data from forty political parties in Latin America between 1990 and 2006 to show that while some parties evolve as predicted by progressive nationalization, others show a tendency towards progressive regionalization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have some Latin American political parties succeeded in responding to voters where others have not? This paper presents a new typology of party realignments and avenues for new theories to explain this variation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on growing literatures regarding the effects of increasing sub-national electoral competition and programmatic party commitments in Latin America, this paper offers an explanation of state-level judicial change in Brazil and Mexico. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 1978 and 2005, after implementing neo-liberal reforms, conservative parties in Latin America have collapsed or declined, while in post-conflict Central America the right continues to dominate politics. The paper examines this development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do political parties adopt primary elections? This study develops a theory of party democratization. It is motivated by the recent proliferation of primary elections in Latin America, which has been well documented but not fully explained. The explanation in this paper consists on making two claims. First that primaries select more electable but less loyal candidates. This claim is made precise with a decision-theoretic model whose predictions are consistent with the main empirical findings of the existing empirical literature. And second that the incentives for party leaders to select electable candidates have increased in the past quarter century. This claim is based on some historical trends in Latin American politics, namely the increased penetration of television, a more investigative journalism, and a decrease in electoral fraud. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the political behavior of labor unions and masses during the reform era in Latin America. Building on Hirschman, it hypothesizes that, during the rule of labor-based parties in Latin America, a sense of loyalty toward their mother parties in government and a crippled striking capability make labor unions unwilling to strike.On the other hand, economic austerity programs might spur mass discontent and increase the likelihood for tides of popular protests. Thus, this model suggests that, during labor-based parties' rule in an economically reforming Latin America, we should observe less union-organized protests and more uncontrolled massive protests. To test the hypotheses, I expand on a statistical model constructed by Markus Kurtz but add to it a dummy variable that defines whether or not a labor-based party controls the country governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to explain the shift from majoritarian to PR electoral systems in Latin America, and the introduction of adjustments - both before and after the reform - to the degrees of proportionality. I argue that PR systems were introduced when the electoral arena changed significantly and threatened the permanence in power of the dominant party. The shift from one system to the other was an effort by the established party to retain partial power under a PR system. Majoritarian systems remained in place when the incumbent party believed that it would be able to gain a plurality of the votes despite an increase in the voting population and the emergence of new parties. An em-pirical analysis of twenty countries over 104 years (1900-2004) provides support for this argument. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the influence of different parliamentary electoral system types on party systems in Latin America in the light of specific contexts, such as cleavages and historical experiences with democracy or the breakdown of democracy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last two decades, corruption has become a key concern throughout the world. Most of what we know about corruption comes from those instances in which misdeeds become public, usually generating a scandal. Why do some acts of corruption become corruption scandals and others do not? In addressing this question, this article argues that scandals are not triggered by corruption per se, but that the emergence of corruption scandals is caused by political competition dynamics within the party or coalition in government. Government insiders leak information on misdeeds in order to gain power within the coalition or party in power. After conceptualizing corruption scandals and dividing their temporal process in three stages, this article argues that there are two alternative strategies followed by insiders that lead to scandals. The arguments advanced are evaluated using empirical evidence from two paradigmatic Latin American cases, Argentina and Chile, from 1989 to 2008. The findings presented support the notion that corruption scandals emerge as a consequence of intra-government competition; suggesting that the prevalence of scandals points to shortcomings in how political systems channel conflicts within the party or coalition in power. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces and develops the concept of party non-systems, defiened as those party universes characterized by a fundamental absence of inter-temporal continuity in the identity of the main parties. It then applies it to Latin America. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comparing three cities in different countries, I explain why only some experiments in participatory government succeed in Latin America. I argue that strongly institutionalized parties can undermine decentralization?s benefits for local democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do national electorates abandon institutionalized parties in favor of radical candidates? Beginning with Hugo Chavez’ successful bid for the Venezuelan presidency in 1998, ten Latin American countries have elected left-leaning governments. This left swing has not been a monolithic one, however. Given the emergence of a radical subset of cases within Latin America’s leftist swing, scholars have attempted to explain why some electorates have voted for radical alternatives to neoliberal reform with Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's Morales and Ecuador's Correa. I argue that the more fundamental question is why did the electorates of Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador choose radical parties to take the helm in the first instance? .x000d..x000d.Evaluating voter-level, institutional and structural explanations for the electoral performance of radical left parties, I find that non-tax revenues such as mineral resources interact with domestic political institutions to increase electoral support for radical left political parties. These findings have significance for electoral, democratization, and rentier state literatures. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does intra party democracy (or the lack of it) affect party systems in developing democracies? Is there a difference in party institutionalization and party (de)centralization between Latin America and India? .x000d..x000d.The Latin American experience suggests that when democracies consolidate political parties acquire stable vote shares, and that party systems become volatile when populists emerge as leaders. In other words, centralized parties are more unstable than decentralized parties because they rely on populist charisma instead of a programmatic agenda. .x000d..x000d.However, party volatility and/or institutionalization have usually been measured by age of party and vote share. Using sub-national legislator data from elections in India from 1980 till 2007, we provide a deeper measure of party institutionalization and volatility by calculating the distribution of power within political parties and assess how it affects party system competition and stability. .x000d..x000d.By explaining the significance of party (de)centralization upon the party system in India, we first hope to compare the contextual peculiarities in India and Latin America, and then nuance the interactions between party system and the distribution of power within parties. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contrary to the theoretical expectations prevalent at the onset of the Third Wave of democratization, many party systems in Latin America have unraveled rather than move towards consolidation. There is a distinguishable trend towards de-institutionalization. This study aims to elucidate the routes via which party systems become inchoate or even transit to non-system status. Three such avenues are delineated and analyzed. One is the retroactive voter punishment, whereby voters punish established parties that are responsible for massive failures of political and economic performance. A second is that of voter revolt against collusive party arrangements that limit representation, accountability and responsiveness. These over-institutionalized cartel-type party systems more prone to collapse when coupled with economic crises. The third route towards party system de-institutionalization is charted by presidential agency: a president´s deliberate attempt to weaken opposition political parties as an integral part of an agenda to concentrate political power. The study emphasizes this last avenue, which has yet to be fully theorized, using Peru, Venezuela and Ecuador as prominent examples. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using cross-national elections and survey data, we determine whether Latin America voters elected left-of-center parties in recent years because of outrage against market reforms or because of anti-incumbent, economic voting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates transitions from liberation/resistance movements to political parties in Latin America and Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the development of green political parties in Latin America absent a concomitant rise in post-materialist values using Müller-Rommel's (2002) framework for green party analysis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A significant number of scholars have anlayzed the relationship between the levels of democrcay and party system institutionalization. Yet, few have done so in a large-N study. We attempt to fill in this gap by analyzing the relationship between party institutionalization and democracy in OECD, Latin American, and Post-Communist democracies. Our results show a correlation between low electoral volatility and only the highest level of democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that shifting legislative coalitions in some Latin American countries are the consequence of regional and particularistic political parties that give the presidential agenda setter an outside option off the main ideological dimension. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics of institutional choice over campaign finance regulations and direct state subsidies to parties and candidates involves a variety of political incentives, including partisan, regional, and electoral motivations. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]