New Insights into Party Institutionalization in Developing Countries

Session Submission Type: Full Submitted Panel

Session Description

While stable and enduring political parties are prerequisites for harnessing representation and accountability in new democracies, a large body of research has characterized political parties in these countries as weak, ephemeral institutions that lack organization and discipline, fail to advocate a coherent policy vision, and struggle to establish durable linkages to the society they are supposed to represent. However, we have accumulated relatively few systematic findings about the factors that promote or undermine the institutionalization of political parties in the developing world, and how these parties attempt to tackle the challenges of party building. To what extent do competitive pressures affect whether politicians choose to invest in building up existing party organizations and platforms or creating new ones? How do the nature of ties between parties, candidates, and societal organizations affect patterns of popular support for these parties?

This panel addresses such questions through a combination of diverse methodologies and a cross-regional approach that provide new insights on the institutionalization of political parties in new democracies. In their study, Arriola et al. use a survey of legislative candidates who competed in the 2006 and 2011 parliamentary elections in Zambia to investigate the factors that shape the party affiliation and defection of politicians. The paper by Jensenius and Suryanarayan uses constituency-level electoral data from Indian state assembly elections as well as individual-level survey data to examine how the strength of party-candidate linkages affects anti-incumbency voting. In his study, Poertner employs both a discrete choice experiment and survey data to understand how new political parties in Bolivia use existing societal organizations build durable party-voter ties and mobilize popular support. The paper by Ibenskas draws on data from the Manifesto Project Database and Chapel Hill expert surveys on parties’ policy positions to explore the causes behind the change in party platforms across 11 Central and Eastern European democracies.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 12: COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 35: POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS AND PARTIES

Individual Presentations

• Politician Defection in Zambia - Leonardo R. Arriola, University of California, Berkeley; Donghyun Danny Choi, University of California, Berkeley; Justine Davis, University of California, Berkeley; Melanie Lauren Thompson, University of California, Berkeley; Lise Rakner, University of Bergen; Ingvild Aagedal Skage, University of Bergen

• Party-candidate Linkages and Anti-Incumbency Voting: Evidence from Indian States - Francesca R. Jensenius, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs; Pavithra Suryanarayan, Johns Hopkins University

• Creating Partisans: New Political Parties and Societal Linkages in Latin America - Mathias Poertner, University of California, Berkeley

Chair

• Adam W. Ziegfeld George Washington University

Discussants

• Keith Weghorst Vanderbilt University

• Adam W. Ziegfeld George Washington University