Are Latin American subnational contests second-order elections? An empirical test

• In Event: Actores políticos subnacionales en América Latina

Abstract

The growing political decentralization in Latin America brought about a myriad of new subnational electoral contests in unitary countries, in addition to the ubiquitous elections in federal nations. This paper seeks to evaluate whether these subnational contests can be understood as second-order elections. Second-order elections are defined as contests that have less at stake and therefore are open to voters’ experimentation with new and smaller parties (Reif and Schmitt 1980). Additionally, in these elections opposition parties at the national level usually performed better than the national incumbent party, hinting that voters may use these contests to both penalize incumbents and try out challengers in less relevant positions. Previous works on the United States and Europe has found that subnational elections share some characteristics of second-order elections, but as far as I am aware of, nobody has tested this in Latin America.

Author

• Julieta Suarez-Cao, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile