Why Not Anti-Populist Parties?
Why Not Anti-Populist Parties? Theory with Evidence from the Andes and Thailand Brandon Van Dyck Political parties are critical for democracy, but where do they come from? Recent analyses, building on classic works like Lipset and Rokkan and Huntington, show that episodes of extraordinary conflict and polarization spawn enduring parties.1 Such episodes—civil war, authoritarian repression, populist mobilization—furnish raw materials for party building. Polarization generates differentiated political identities. Extra-institutional conflict motivates groups to develop ground organizations. Adversity weeds out careerists, selecting for ideologues. Intragroup shared struggle and intergroup animosity and grievance cement in-group loyalties, discouraging defection. Through these mechanisms, polarization and conflict birth parties with distinct brands, territorial infrastructures, committed activists, and cohesion. Often, such episodes produce party systems. In Latin America, civil wars spawned stable two-party systems in Uruguay, Colombia, and (more recently) El Salvador, as warring sides evolved into parties after conflict ceased. In Brazil and Chile, bureaucratic authoritarianism generated stable right and left parties founded by the supporters and opponents of outgoing dictatorships.2 It is noteworthy, then, that populism typically generates just one strong party: a populist, not an anti-populist, one.3 Where successful, populists—defined as personalistic political outsiders who electorally mobilize the popular classes against the political and/or economic elite4—almost invariably polarize society and may engender sustained, even violent conflict between populist and anti-populist forces.5 Numerous populist parties have emerged from such conflicts. In the mid-twentieth century, populism produced Argentina’s Peronist party (PJ) and Peru’s American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (APRA).
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