Historical Timing, Political Cleavages, and Party Building in Latin America

Abstract

Theorists of democracy routinely assert that party systems perform a series of vital functions for representative governance. If that is the case, “third wave” democracies — those born through the spread of representative institutions to new countries and regions since the mid-1970s (Huntington 1991) — would appear to be in serious trouble, as many are characterized by weak, volatile, or fragile party systems. At the elite level, political entrepreneurs in many “third wave” democracies form, discard, and switch parties at a dizzying pace, offering voters little continuity on the “supply side” of the political marketplace. At the mass level — the “demand” side - voters often neither trust nor identify with political parties, and they refrain from developing durable partisan loyalities, much less joining party organizations. Not only are voters “mobile,” switching their partisan preferences from election cycle to the next, but in many contexts they are prone to support independent “outsiders” or populist figures whose primary appeal seems to be their detachment from established party organizations. Not surprisingly, prominent voices have expressed concerns that weak party systems may jeopardize the stability of new democratic regimes, or at least diminish the quality of democratic representation (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007).