Crafting Mass Partisanship at the Grass Roots, from the Top Down
34 Pages Posted: 16 Jul 2012 Last revised: 2 Aug 2012
There are 2 versions of this paper
Crafting Mass Partisanship at the Grass Roots, from the Top Down
Date Written: 2012
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 identication 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
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation