Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Party System Collapse in South America: Voters, Party Organizations, and Adaptation

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In Venezuela and Peru, the traditional party systems have collapsed since 1980. These two events, together with changes in the Italian and Canadian party systems during the 1990.s, are probably the most dramatic party system changes in recent democratic history. In Argentina, one of the two main parties has likewise collapsed, but the other has survived. In many other Latin American countries, such party system crises have not occurred. This project will seek to explain the social and political origins of these contrasting outcomes. The first stage of this project explores the electoral basis, or demand side, of the party system crises in Latin America, with the goal of distinguishing countries with high electoral volatility and deep voter dissatisfaction with the party system, such as Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela, from countries that did not experience such severe party system crises, like Chile and Costa Rica. Because this part of the research will test hypotheses about voting behavior by analyzing existing macro-political and .economic indicators, as well as survey data, it does not require substantial fieldwork. Indeed, based on data from a major archive at the Universidad de Simon Bolivar in Venezuela, some progress has already been made on this component of the project. Initial findings suggest that policy divergence between voters and the traditional parties, rather than perceptions of corruption or economic incompetence, has been the driving force behind the party system crises. A second part of the project will examine the supply side of party system collapse: how each of the major political parties in Argentina, Peru, and Venezuela responded to crises involving a mismatch between party strategies and voter demands, focusing on decision-making by party leaders. This project will use fieldwork to collect the data necessary for an analysis of the evolving relationships among organization, party adaptation, and electoral success for each party. The analysis will focus on the question of why most of the major political parties in these countries failed to adapt to voter demands and therefore lost electoral relevance.as well as why the Peronist Party in Argentina was able to adapt. Specifically, statistical time-series analysis combined with analysis of electoral and party variation in different geographical subunits of each country will help distinguish among the major explanations for failed party adaptation: over-bureaucratization of party decision-making channels, over-institutionalization of party links to social organizations (especially unions), and the opportunity costs of shifting away from mobilized constituencies. The primary component of the research to be funded by the National Science Foundation is the construction of a dataset on socioeconomic characteristics, electoral behavior, and party organization in a random sample of geographic subunits of each of the three focus countries. This dataset, which will draw on a new survey of local party elites, census data, voting data, and other sources, will be used to test the theories discussed in this proposal. Broader Impacts This project will give several South American social science graduate students training and experience in party elite surveying. Furthermore, when appropriate, the results from this research will be made public, through the popular press in addition to academic journals. This may help citizens and political leaders better understand the nature and origins of current conflicts in each country.