Crafting Mass Partisanship at the Grass Roots, from the Top Down

Abstract

How does mass partisanship emerge? We explore the varying fates of parties in Brazil|a decidedly anti-party environment in which social-cleavages and historical legacies cannot explain the emergence of partisanship|and highlight a heretofore unexplored mechanism of crafting mass partisanship that sets the PT (Workers' Party) apart from other parties: its deliberate efforts to reach out to organized elements in civil society by expanding its local-level organization. We show that the PT invested where civil society was organizationally dense, and that this led to increased party identication and improved electoral performance. Other parties, for path-dependent reasons, did not adopt this tactic and in the context of weak socio-cultural cleavages, have failed to gain partisan support.

Keywords: Brazil, elections, parties, partisanship, party organization