"Critical Junctures and Party Representation in South America" by S. Bornschier

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

Party systems in South America differ dramatically in their ability to channel and respond to citizen preferences. This “Author Meets Critics” panel brings together four noted scholars of democratization, parties, and party systems in South America and the author to discuss the book manuscript “From Historical Polarization to the Left Turn: Explaining Party System Responsiveness in South America”.
The manuscript adopts a cleavage approach to explain differences in party system responsiveness. It theorizes two critical junctures and tests the model by combining comparative history with a quantitative measurement of the quality of representation in ten South American countries. The first critical juncture is a bifurcation in the degree to which party systems were able to sustain prolonged ideological polarization from the early 20th Century until the 1970s. Where voters experienced several decades of intense polarization before the era of authoritarianism, they developed cognitive schemes that survived the authoritarian period. As a result, party systems in Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina stood out in their capacity to represent voter preferences after re-democratization as compared to the other cases. The second critical juncture is constituted by the imprint of authoritarian rule itself. By changing the format and the mechanics of party systems, the legacy of authoritarianism made Brazil, Bolivia, and Mexico at least temporarily deviate from their historical path that had locked them into low levels of responsiveness. The two critical junctures ultimately culminated in divergent trajectories during Latin America’s “left turn”. More specifically, differences in party system responsiveness resulting from the interplay between these two critical junctures help explain whether existing programmatic parties of the left or new, populist parties absorbed the left-wing momentum of this period. While providing a novel explanation for some of the well-known differences between South American party systems, the approach also helps us understand why the effects of radical left populism on representation have been fundamentally different in Bolivia than in Venezuela.
Beyond its specific focus on Latin America, the manuscript contributes to a growing strand of research on historical party system formation in other regions such as Eastern Europe. It also resonates with an emerging literature on the effects of the authoritarian past on democratic politics. Finally, the discussion will be of interest to scholars of comparative democratization since the responsiveness of party systems to voter preferences constitutes an important element of the quality of democracy.
After a brief presentation by the author, the presenters will critically assess the manuscript’s contribution, its core concepts and findings with respect to research on parties and party systems in Latin America. They will also relate these to current debates in the field, including the force of historical factors in shaping party systems and political identities, the challenges of party building and survival, as well as the different ways parties organize to establish linkages with voters.

Sub Unit

• Division 12: Comparative Politics of Developing Countries

Chair

• Ryan Carlin Georgia State University

Presenters

• Evelyne Huber University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• Kenneth M. Roberts Cornell University

• Jennifer Cyr Universidad Torcuato Di Tella

• Simon C. J. Bornschier University of Zurich