Creating Partisans: New Political Parties and Societal Linkages in Latin America

• In Event: New Insights into Party Institutionalization in Developing Countries

Abstract

How do voters form attachments to new political parties? Focusing on voters’ responses to different types of party mobilization strategies, I compare the linkages new parties forge through direct appeals to voters versus through organizationally mediated strategies, i.e. appeals that build ties to voters through existing societal organizations. While the mediating role that organizations can play have gotten largely forgotten with the decline of labor unions and the more recent literature has largely focused on new parties’ direct appeals to voters, new types of organizations—such as indigenous movements, peasant unions, and informal sector unions—can provide an alternate source of political support, as for example when organizations endorse parties and candidates. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theory, I argue that such organizational linkages can help parties obtain electoral support and yield more durable voter-party ties by socializing organization members into identifying with the party itself. A discrete choice experiment, presenting voters in Bolivia with campaign posters, and survey data demonstrate that organizational endorsements are at least as effective in mobilizing voters as direct appeals, organizational membership is strongly associated with the development of partisan attachments, and organization meeting attendance is connected to the robustness of the attachment.

Author

• Mathias Poertner, University of California, Berkeley