Sustaining Partisanship in Latin America

• In Event: Parties, Party Systems and Partisanship in Latin America

Abstract

Since the late 20th century, several major Latin American parties have lost most of their partisan supporters. Previous research has attributed these declines in partisanship to parties’ mistakes on the national stage, such as corruption scandals. However, voters’ partisan loyalties often erode at different rates across different parts of the same country. Under what conditions are partisans willing to overlook their party’s corruptions scandals, brand dilution, and other missteps in national office and continue identifying with their party?

This paper highlights the role that municipal governments play in sustaining both local party organizations and voters’ partisan loyalties. By holding a mayorship, a party gains greater access to resources that it can invest in developing its network of local party activists and strengthening its local party organizations. These local party organizations, in turn, stabilize voters’ partisan loyalties during moments of crisis for the party.

I test these relationships between local incumbency, local party organizations, and mass party identification using regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference designs and data from Chile and Brazil. I find that local incumbency boosts party activists’ employment prospects in the municipal government, enables the party to recruit new activists at a faster rate, and makes the party’s veteran activists less likely to leave the party. I also find that voters’ partisan loyalties are more immune to corruption scandals in municipalities where their party holds local office, and in municipalities where it has a larger activist network. I evaluate the alternative explanation that these relationships are driven by direct clientelistic relationships between the mayor and voters, but I find that the effects of local incumbency and party activists on partisanship are actually strongest in the municipalities where clientelism is less prevalent. These findings suggest that strong local party organizations can help shield a party’s base of partisan support from the effects of negative shocks to its national-level reputation.

Author

• Cameron Sells, Tulane University