Parliamentary Affairs (2013) 66, 834–855 doi:10.1093/pa/gss010 Advance Access Publication 4 May 2012

Universal Party Primaries and General Election

Outcomes: The Case of (1999–2009) Downloaded from

David Altman*

Pontificia Universidad Cato´ lica de Chile, Santiago, Chile http://pa.oxfordjournals.org/ *Corresponding author: [email protected]

What would happen if all parties competing in the electoral game were forced to hold open, binding, concurrent and obligatory primaries constrained by a ‘Sore Loser Law’? The answer to this question has not been explored, perhaps because there is only one democracy in the world that has applied such rules more than once: Uruguay. This country offers a fertile ground for testing some at Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile on September 30, 2013 of the hypotheses developed by the literature. This research supports the hypoth- eses that (i) candidates selected in primary elections with more than one candi- date are likely to be the ones located farthest away from the median voter, but closer to the party’s constituents and (ii) there is an optimal level of competitive- ness in primaries, beyond which either higher or lower competition can damage the party in the corresponding general elections. The implications of this study have relevant bearing on critical questions that academics, politicians and political reformers regularly ask about primaries, not only in the UK, but also elsewhere.

The American literature suggests that intense disputes among leaders in party primaries have a negative effect on the party’s performance in the following general election (Polsby, 1983). There are several reasons for this relationship. First, voters in primaries are not the same as those voting in general elections; those voting in primaries are more driven by partisanship. Parties tend to select the most ideologically representative leaders of the party, and usually that person is not the closest to the median voter of the citizenry (Ranney, 1968). Second, primary campaigns sometimes allow the venting of internal differ- ences that concomitantly undermine parties’ collective action efforts for the general election (Hacker, 1965; Stone, 1986; Lengle et al., 1995). Kenney and Rice argue ‘when one party has a divisive primary season while the other party’s nominee is essentially uncontested, the divided party will be adversely affected in November’ Atkeson (1998, p. 257). Third, after intense primaries,

# The Author [2012]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Hansard Society; all rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected] Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 835 parties will arrive exhausted at the general elections (Buquet and Chasquetti, 2008). Thus, it is normally accepted that those parties that keep internal conflict in check (among legislative or executive candidates) do better in general elections. Of course, all these arguments, as expected, are contested theoretically and empirically, not only within the American literature, but also from a comparative perspective (Ralph-Telford, 1965; Ware, 1979). In light of these concerns about primaries’ effects, cross-national research on primary elections regularly addresses two related questions: (i) whether extremist leaders are normally elected and (ii) whether there is an optimal level of compe- tition. Studying the Uruguayan primaries offers fertile ground on which to test many of the hypotheses discussed above.1 The Uruguayan case provides unprece- dented leverage in responding to these apprehensions, as the primary is simultan- eous for all parties and across all regions, and is constrained by the sore loser provision.2 As there cannot be strategic responses from one district to the other or from one party to the other as in the USA, Uruguayan primaries push us to a completely new arena of intraparty competition and dynamics. Primaries in Uruguay solve some of the coordination problems of other primaries, but create new problems of their own. It has been argued that in the USA there is no equity in the political leverage states have in so far as the first states’ primaries signal the whole game. No matter how big ‘SuperTuesday’ is, the results of primaries in the last states voting risk irrelevance in that they often cannot change the power relationship among can- didates within parties’ national conventions. The question is whether, when all parties face primaries at the same time and place, the hypotheses advanced by the literature can be sustained. Whatever the answer to this question, it has direct implications for pundits’ electoral advice. This paper fills the existing lacuna in our knowledge of the effects party primaries have on general elections when all parties are obliged to participate. The paper is structured as follows. The first section develops the theoretical bases for the working hypotheses of the paper. The second section describes the legal apparatus and practices of internal . Due to space limitations, this paper omits the reasons for the constitutional change of 1996,

1Primary elections much like those current in Uruguay were held in Argentina on 14 August 2011. Unlike in Uruguay, however, the vote was compulsory rather than voluntary. Participation reached 81.4 per cent of the citizenry. Despite the Argentinean primaries’ similar institutional architecture, the fact that such primaries have so far only occurred once in Argentina limits their usefulness for purposes of the present analysis. 2The Sore Loser provision prevents candidates from changing parties in the middle of an electoral cycle. 836 Parliamentary Affairs which can be found elsewhere.3 The third section empirically tackles the advanced hypotheses. Conclusions are provided in the final section.

1. Leadership extremism and optimal level of political competition: two hypotheses Research on party primaries in Latin America remains limited to a handful of exceptions. Alca´ntara Sa´ez (2002); Freidenberg (2003) and Zovatto and Freidenberg (2006) provide useful cross-national descriptions of primaries and how they operate (in cases where they are held, of course), but neither study hypothesises about their consequences. In contrast, Colomer (2003) studies four cases of primaries held before national elections (Argentina 1999, Chile 1999–2000, Mexico 2000 and Uruguay 1999) and concludes that ‘internal democracy can reduce the support of a party in the general elector- ate’, and that primaries select weaker candidates than do less inclusive selection procedures (Hazan, 1997; Hopkin, 2001; De Luca et al., 2002; Barnea and Rahat, 2007). Along the same lines, Carey and Polga-Hecimovich (2006, 2008) study whether primary elections are more useful than other methods for selecting stronger candidates for general elections. Three internal elections have transpired in Uruguay since the constitutional reform of 1996. As expected, parties have chosen different strategies for dealing with the new primary system, and each party dealt with the situation differently in 2009, 2004 and 1999, in part because of a learning process and in part due to different political environments. As expected by the literature, in parties with more than one candidate compet- ing in the internal election, the winners were usually those located furthest from the median national voter, but closer to the party’s constituents. In a relatively recent article, Colomer (2003) shows how ‘the candidates selected on a primary elections’ basis tend to be not very popular or losers in the corresponding presidential elections’ (p. 119). This occurs due to the differences between who participates in the two rounds. The candidate closest to the median voter within the partisan electorate should be the winning candidate of a primary elec- tion; however, ‘a centrist within a party may be an extremist for the whole elect- orate’ (Buquet and Chasquetti, 2008, p. 328). At the same time, it has been argued that the extent of this problem actually varies depending on how primaries are organised because ‘in more open systems, participation by a wider spectrum of the electorate means that candidates must appeal to more moderate voters, leading to the election of more moderate candidates’ (Gerber and Morton, 1998). As one can see, despite the important progress in the development of

3See for instance Buquet (1997); Instituto de Ciencia Polı´tica (2000); Altman et al. (2006). Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 837 primary theories, the jury is still out on certain issues. I therefore put forward the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1: Candidates selected in primary elections with more than one candidate are likely to be the ones located farthest away from the median voter, but closer to the party’s constituents.

Within the Latin America region, Carey and Polga-Hecimovich have examined whether primary elections produce presidential candidates who are stronger or weaker in general elections than candidates chosen by other methods.4 They found that the selection of candidates in primaries appears to be an asset—what they term the Primary Bonus Hypothesis—with such candidates reaping a bonus in the general election of about 5% (Carey and Polga- Hecimovich, 2006). There is no evidence of any primary penalty whatsoever. Yet, if all parties competing in the general elections have primaries, the primary bonus hypothesis is nullified as it is impossible for every party to increase their relative electoral support. Not in vain, studies of primaries in Latin America have included only parties that have unilaterally decided to hold primaries, as long as not all parties in that system held primaries (Kemahlioglu et al., 2009). If all parties compete simultaneously in primaries, then the primary bonus hypothesis might serve as an inspiration but needs to be adapted to such an environment. If fragmentation is very high and attrition very intense, the winner of a party’s primary will have notable difficulties in harmonising his or her party’s factions towards the general elections. In contrast, if fragmentation is absent, then the party will fail to mobilise its constituents (as they know the result beforehand), and will consequently come out from the primaries rather weakened (in size and activism) heading into the general election. Thus, I claim that both extremes in internal party fragmentation damage the party’s chances at the following general election. I suspect that there should be an optimal level of competition beyond which either higher or lower competition damages parties’ general electoral competitiveness. Accordingly, my second hypothesis is as follows:

Hypothesis 2: There is an optimal level of competitiveness in primaries, beyond which either higher or lower competition can damage the party in the corresponding general elections.

4Theoretically, we must make a clear distinction between candidate selection and leadership selection. These are two very separate intra-party arenas, with very different implications (Kenig, 2009a,b). This manuscript deals with leadership selection. 838 Parliamentary Affairs

2. Brief background on Uruguayan internal elections By 1996, had directly approved a comprehensive constitutional reform at the ballot box. That reform included—among other things—the realisation of obligatory, binding, open and concurrent primaries for all parties competing for the national executive and legislature. Yet, Uruguayans have had a long and intricate relationship with party primaries. This little country in fact has one of the longest traditions of general party primaries in the western world. Since 1922, simultaneous party primaries have co-existed with general elections. Until 1994, the double simultaneous vote (DSV) permitted party tickets for the presidential election to divide into com- petitive fractions supporting different presidential candidates.5 The votes for these fractions were then cumulated according to a party ticket. Thus, Uruguayan presidents were the most voted-for candidates from the most voted-for party, though they did not necessarily gain the largest vote share at the national level. Hence, in a way, the new system is basically the separation of the DSV into two stages, and the constitutional reforms of 1996 can be understood as a natural inheritance of the previous system. Second, using the criteria of the seminal article of Rahat and Hazan (2001),as well as that of Billie (2001), the current Uruguayan internal party elections can be considered the most inclusive and democratic elections of this type (Rahat, 2009). Every citizen—regardless of whether they are members or adherents of a party— may participate, and nowhere in the process does an individual have to make public any adherence to any political group whatsoever. In other words, the Uru- guayan partisan selectorate is the whole electorate (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2003). While there is a relatively long history of parties holding such primaries in the world, nowhere—except in Uruguay—does the whole party system do so.6 The first stage of each Uruguayan electoral cycle consists of mandatory internal elections, all held the same day, for all parties competing for Congress and the Presidency. Each party is required to elect one presidential candidate as well as its delegates to national and regional conventions, respectively called the O´ rgano Deliberativo Nacional (ODN) and O´ rgano Deliberativo Departamental (ODD). The National Convention is responsible for choosing the candidate for

5There is disagreement on whether to use the concept ‘fraction’ or ‘faction’ in the context of the Uruguayan party system. Some authors have called these political units factions (see Mainwaring and Shugart, 1997). Following Sartori (1976), I will not use the term faction because it has derogatory connotations: it is deemed ‘a political group bent on a disruptive and harmful facere’. Also, I consider this definition misleading since fractions are more permanent than factions (such as the circumstantial ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ groups formed in Venezuelan parties; see Coppedge (1994). 6Panama (1999 only) and Paraguay (2003 only) had statutes requiring that all candidates be selected in primaries (Kemahlioglu et al., 2009). Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 839 the Vice-Presidency of the Republic as well as the presidential candidate if the winner of the presidential primaries does not obtain a majority of the valid votes (more than 50%) or reach at least 40% of the votes with at least a 10 per- centage point lead over the candidate who comes in second.7 The results of the primaries are constrained by a Sore Loser Law.8 Parties and their fractions can present their lists up until one month before the election. There are two types of lists. One type of list contains the name of the candidate for the presidency and the list of candidates (and their alternates) for the ODN. A maximum of 500 candidates may appear on a list, with an equal number of alternates. The other kind of list includes up to 250 candidates (with their respective alternates) for the ODD. At least one-third of candidates and alternate candidates must belong to each sex,9 and each individual whose name is included anywhere on the lists must sign a written consent presented to the electoral authorities. The electoral authorities (Corte Electoral del Uruguay) check each list. Elections are held concurrently for all parties competing in the national elections. Adherents of all parties report to the same polling station. Citizens are not required to declare anything at any stage, as anonymity of party adherence is a right for every citizen. However, each citizen can vote in just one party primary; otherwise, the vote is nullified. All the votes for all candidates and parties are polled together in the same urn, and the counting of votes is also per- formed simultaneously. Unlike most primaries in the world where parties are solely responsible for their respective internal elections, in Uruguay the whole process is—as with general elections—controlled by the Corte Electoral del Uruguay,and parties and fractions are limited to acting as observers in the process. Parties and their internal factions make enormous efforts to broaden their electoral support during this stage of the electoral process. The proliferation of lists is most evident in internal elections. In the last internal elections of 2009, more than 2800 lists were registered and accepted by electoral authorities, reflect- ing an upward trend since the system was implemented. Fully 176,516 citizens in

7This method of choosing a candidate for President was not used yet as all candidates reached the required votes to bypass the designation by the parties’ conventions. The role of ODDs is not relevant for this research. 8The electoral cycle comprised (i) the internal election of parties on the last Sunday of June; (ii) the presidential and legislative national elections on the last Sunday of October; (iii) the last Sunday of November run off if no presidential formulae reaches more than 50% of all votes and finally (iv) regional elections on the second Sunday of May. 9This is the very first time that Uruguayan law has enforced gender quotas, though they will not be enforced in the October 2010 election. See law 18.476 at http://sip.parlamento.gub.uy/leyes/ ley18476.htm. The quotas will be enforced for all parties for all elections starting with the 2014 cycle. 840 Parliamentary Affairs fact ran in the June 2009 elections either as candidates or substitutes for ODDs and ODNs.10 Though this number per se may not seem so enormous, with Uruguay having a universe of just 2,584,219 eligible voters, the number of candidates actually represented an amazing 6.83% of the voting population.11 Were the same portion of eligible US voters to run for office, more than 14,528,778 candidates would have run in the 2008 electoral cycle!12

3. Extremist leaders? On the eve of the primaries of 2009, the political atmosphere was uncertain, with no clear winner in two of the three major parties, the Frente Amplio and Partido Nacional. This kind of real competition within the center-left coalition was unprecedented in Uruguay. The two front-runners were not only members of the executive cabinet under the leadership of President Tabare´ Va´zquez, but also leaders of relevant factions within the coalition. Jose´ Mujica,13 leader of the leftist faction of the coalition Espacio 609, defeated social-democrat Danilo Astori, former Minister of Economy and Finances. Astori was known for his sober administration of the country’s finances and undoubtedly much closer to the national median voter. The original Uruguayan traditionally had a direct impact on party leadership, at least in the so-called traditional parties (Nacional and Color- ado). In these parties, those with more votes controlled the parties’ executive organs until the electoral cards were reshuffled again. Once the reforms of 1996 were implemented for the 1999 elections, the traditional parties showed their flexi- bility in the face of institutional change. In these parties, votes had long been the currency of power. The FA, in contrast, has a different internal organisation. The most prominent, decisive and deliberative organ of the party is the Congress— an institution that co-exists with the ODN recently established by the constitution. Most delegates of the Congress are elected from a wide net of Comite´s de Base,of

10About 48% of the 176,516 citizens were women. 11The counting of the number of citizens running on these lists is much more complicated than it appears as several lists of the same faction may easily repeat names. The Corte Electoral checks for inconsistencies among lists (for example the same individual having accepted running for two different parties); there is a huge database for these purposes. 12Estimated over a voting-eligible population of 212,720,027 (http://elections.gmu.edu/Turnout_ 2008G.html). 13Mujica was one of the leaders of the guerrillas and was held prisoner during the whole dictatorship government (1973–1985). He was finally elected President of the Republic in November 2009. He excels at a rather contestatory rhetoric, which is almost anti-systemic and sometimes bothers even his co-partisans. Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 841 which there are roughly 500 around the country. Votingis not secret, and it rewards hard-core militant groups (most notably the Partido Comunista and the Movi- miento de Participacio´n Popular). For instance, while the Partido Comunista receives about 6% of the FA votes, through this system it might reach 30%. In marked contrast to the situation within the other two parties, the power each group has in the Congress thus does not correlate with its share of votes. In mid-December 2008, the almost 2500 delegates of the Congress of the FA met to decide the presidential candidate(s) for the coming internal elections of June 2009. At this Congress, in a highly controversial motion, it was decided that each delegate could vote for as many candidates as he pleased. The order of each name was decided by lot. Mujica controlled most of the delegates, and as expected his victory was clear; Mujica received 71.1% endorsement, Cara´m- bula 42.5, Astori 23.7, Martı´nez 21.6 and Rubio only 17.1%. The Congress none- theless formally allowed other candidates to run for office in the coming internal elections. Only the first three did so. Unlike previous primaries where the FA had little or no internal competition, the race in 2009 was rather intense. At the same time, in the Partido Nacional, former President Luis A. Lacalle (1990– 1995), well known for his ‘neo-liberal’ and conservative politics, defeated more centrist Senator Jorge Larran˜aga. Such was his perceived moderation that, as soon as Mujica started to break away from Astori in opinion polls, he openly asked Astori’s and Color- ado’s voters to vote for him in order to close the doors to Mujica.14 Because of some of Mujica’s contentious claims Larran˜aga maintained that, referring to the controversial Bolivian president, ‘Uruguay does not need another Evo Morales’.15 Within the , competition was no more than symbolic. Pedro Bordaberry—a former minister in the government of Batlle (2000–2005)—had more than 70% support from the very outset of the campaign and had no pro- blems whatsoever in defeating Jose´ Amorı´n Batlle and Luis Hierro Lo´pez (the more moderate leaders of the party). One of the peculiar aspects of this candidate is, simply speaking, his last name. Bordaberry’s father, Juan Marı´a Bordaberry, was the president who dissolved Parliament in 1973, and his grandfather, Domingo Bordaberry Elizondo, was one of the more conservative members of the Colorado Party who actively supported Terra’s authoritarian coup of 1933. His family name itself thus carried an exceptionally heavy symbolic load.

14http://www.elpais.com.uy/especiales/elecciones/2009/pnacional_420849.asp.

15For example, Mujica claimed that: ‘In order to make the essential changes in a second government, we must excite the people. This is done with presidents who are able to go on hunger strike, to chew you out, to raise hell, to fight the bureaucracy, the leadership of the unions, the military. If you are going to stand like a prudish man, and this and that and who knows what, you’d better not fight for the government’, Jose´ Mujica in Brecha (29 May 2009) [Author’s translation]. 842 Parliamentary Affairs

Figure 1 Left-right spatial distribution of citizens, parties and candidates on the eve of internal elections in Uruguay, 2009. Note: The y-axis refers to the density function of left-right spatial distribution of citizens. Parties are located at different levels of the y-axis simply for graphical reasons.

In order to represent this state of affairs, Figure 1 depicts the spatial distribu- tion of citizens, parties and candidates on the eve of internal elections in Uruguay in 2009. Using a typical 1–10 left-right continuum, the distribution of citizens’ ideological placement and the space covered by parties is calculated based on the ideological placement of individuals who declare sympathy for the party con- sidered (these data come from LAPOP).16 In the absence of opinion polls regard- ing the location of parties’ candidates, the spatial location comes from an expert survey conducted by the author three weeks before the internal elections of 2009.17

16Being aware that a proper specification of political competition requires a theory where parties compete in multidimensional spaces (Roemer, 2006). Even if one is interested only in one narrow, particular policy, the position of a voter on other issues will affect the equilibrium for that particular policy. The left-right continuum nonetheless offers a useful shortcut for understanding the intra- and inter-party dynamics of political competition, even with all its limitations.

17Database accessible at: http://www.icp.puc.cl/daltman/. Note: all opinion polls at the time of the questionnaire indicated that Hierro was clearly and consistently the second candidate in preferences within the Partido Colorado. One of the surprises of these elections was the fact that Amorin came in second. In any case, this turn of events merely lends further support to the overall argument presented here, as Amorin is more moderate than Hierro and closer to the national median voter (in terms of the basic left-right continuum). Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 843

The winners of the internal contests were Mujica, Lacalle and Bordaberry in the Frente Amplio, Partido Nacional and Partido Colorado, respectively. Interest- ingly, each of the candidates was located far from the national median voter. Had they chosen Astori, Larran˜aga and Amorin (or even Hierro), each party would have competed with its more moderate candidate, and thus would have maxi- mised its chances of capturing the Downsian median voter. Of course, Figure 1 does not provide all the information required for a subtle assessment of each party’s choice, as it might be the case that the distribution of preferences in each party is rather skewed either to the left or to the right. Figure 2 therefore shows the density distribution of each of the major parties based on LAPOP 2008 and the relative location of candidates based on expert assessments. With these figures, it becomes much clearer that while citizens elected the most representative candidates within each party—the one who is the closest to the median voter within the partisan electorate—these candidates were, speaking from a national perspective, ‘extremists’. Similar analyses could be done for the 1999 and 2004 elections, but limitations on data accessibility make this endeavour much more difficult. Buquet and Chasquetti describe the 1999 and 2004 primary results as follows: In 2004 the major fractions of the PC unified behind a single candidate, thus distorting the primary process. The result, however, proved disas- trous as the party lost badly in the general election.[...] In 1999 the PN’s winning candidate – Lacalle – was without doubt closer to the median Blanco voter, but his defeated contender – Ramı´rez – was much closer to the whole electorate’s center. Something similar could be said about the FA, whose winner, Va´zquez, clearly showed a more radical profile than the defeated Astori.18 The winner in the Colorado internal election, Batlle, however, was ideologically placed more to the right than the defeated candidate, Hierro, [...] but Batlle was still in a much better position with the entire electorate due to Hierro’s relation with the outgoing Sanguinetti’s government. In 1999, then, the Color- ados chose the best candidate for the general election and were success- ful. [...] In 2004, the only party with a true primary was the PN, choosing Larran˜aga over Lacalle. In this case Larran˜aga was closer than Lacalle to the median voter, and thus this case does not conform to Colomer’s hypothesis that party militants will choose the more extreme candidate. Furthermore, even though the Blancos chose a centrist, the FA won the general election in a landslide, despite Va´zquez’s position on the left of the ideological scale (Buquet and Chasquetti, 2008, pp. 326–329).

18See Altman (2001) for graphical location of all candidates in the eye’s of party legislators. 844 Parliamentary Affairs

Figure 2 Ideological distribution of voters and candidates of major parties (Uruguay, 2009). Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 845

Perhaps in part because most parties choose poorly, it is not evident that a particular extremist leader has a considerable handicap in the next general election. In a way, bad choices neutralise each other, and consequently, Carey and Polga-Hecimovich’s decision to eliminate Uruguay from their studies is correct, as it is impossible to assess the differences primaries make for parties’ electoral performance in the next election if all parties hold them. In any case, the tendency demonstrated in the literature seems to hold rather well within the Uruguayan milieu, as in just one case out of eight—where there was competence—the presidential candidate elected in the party primary was the one closer to the national median voter (Larran˜aga in 2004). In short, about 85% of the time where strong competition occurred, party sympathisers chose the candidate located farthest away from the Uruguayan median voter, as Hypothesis 1 stated. From this perspective, the way each party selects its candidates has direct implications for the type of candidate it runs in the general election. If only mili- tants of a particular party comprise the selectorate, extremist leaders are likely to be selected (the worst scenario for the party’s interest in winning the general elec- tion). If the leadership of a party selects the candidate, they will favour more cen- trist candidates, as they usually have subsequent elections in mind (the best scenario for the party). Finally, open primaries should produce results midway between these two opposite alternatives. If this is true, an interesting question regarding internal electoral processes then arises: why have none of the relevant parties succeeded in arranging a unique candidate for the primaries, thus bypass- ing the risk of choosing an extremist leader, and taking advantage of presenting a moderate leader in the ‘October’ contest? Interesting as this question is, it lies beyond the scope of this piece of research.

4. An optimal level of competition? Some influential research opens the door for testing the impact of internal elec- tions on parties’ general electoral results. A recent study of the Uruguayan elect- oral system shows that, while intense primaries damage parties’ performance in the general elections (as has been argued for other countries), the other extreme could be bad as well (Buquet and Chasquetti, 2008, pp. 326–329). Buquet and Chasquetti suggest the existence of something like an optimal level of competitiveness in primaries, beyond which either higher or lower competi- tion can damage the party in the corresponding general elections. In order to analyse this effect, they calculate the effective number of presidential candidates in each party contesting nomination; they claim that when this index departs 846 Parliamentary Affairs from two—which would mean a rather even competition—the performance in the immediate general election worsens.19 Based on their examination of the primaries of 1999 and 2004, the only years for which they had access to data, Buquet and Chasquetti noted that these pri- maries were marked by competition that often highlighted intra-party differences and generated internal confrontation. Based on these observations, it seems that maybe it would be rational to minimise such internal conflicts. Buquet and Chasquetti themselves, however, recognised that the number of cases they had for statistically testing any hypothesis was rather limited. This section complements Buquet and Chasquetti’s study in several ways. First, I include a completely new round of internal party elections and a general election (June and October 2009, respectively). Second, for the elections of 1999, I include all parties allowed to run in October that ran under the old system in 1994. For the elections of 2004 and 2009, I account for all significant parties (those that succeeded in surpassing the official threshold of votes in the primaries in order to run in the national elections of October). In each of these ways, I expand the universe of cases examined. Finally, I go beyond national aggregate electoral results—which would provide fewer than two dozen observations—and delve further into the sub-national units of the country (departments). In this way, each party primary generates not 1 but 19 independ- ent observations, substantially increasing my universe of analysis. Table 1 con- denses the data used here. In Table 2, I run a multivariate regression model where the dependent vari- able is the net electoral growth of each party in each department between a general election t and the previous one (general election t-1).20 My universe of analysis includes the three rounds of elections: 1999, 2004 and 2009. Although it does not consider national results at all, it is plausible to foresee that if the FA, for example, earns more votes in 2009 than in 2004, it is likely that most of the 19 departments will also show a gain in the votes for the FA. In order to control for this systemic effect, I have included a series of dummy variables for each political party (essentially the same as running a fixed effect model).

 19 2 Effective number of presidential candidates (ENPC) is estimated as follows: ENPC ¼ 1/ PCi , where PCi is the percentage of votes for presidential candidates of the ith party contesting the October election. 20It must be noted that understanding the reasons behind electoral competition is a complex endeavour, and it could be even more trying to isolate the effects of a particular variable (competition in primaries), controlling for all other relevant ones, on the dependent variable (electoral performance at general elections). Table 1 Presidential primaries in Uruguay since 1999: type of competition and results (national results)

1999 2004 2009

Type of primary ENC and candidates with Type of primary ENC and candidates with Type of primary ENC and candidates with their share of party vote their share of party vote their share of party vote

PC Well-balanced Net electoral growth 0.4 Hegemonic Net electoral growth 222.2 Hegemonic Net electoral growth 6.8 competition ENC 2.0candidate ENC 1.2candidate ENC 1.8 El General and Primaries Party Universal Diff. top 2: 10.8 Diff. top 2: 84.2 Diff. top 2: 57.5 J. Batlle 54.9 G. Stirling 91.0 P. Bordaberry 72.2 L. Hierro 44.1 A. Iglesias 6.8 J. Amorı´n Batlle 14.7 V. Vaillant 0.5 R. Lombardo 1.3 L. Hierro 11.9 F. Bouza 0.3 M. Flores Silva 0.7 D. Lamas 1.0 C. Cabrera 0.2 G. Boquete 0.0 P. Echegaray 0.0 E. Cardoso 0.0 E. Cardoso 0.0 J. Ruiz 0.0 PN Highly competitive, Net electoral growth 28.9 Net electoral growth 12.8 Well-balanced Net electoral growth 25.3 vitriol ENC 2.8 ENC 1.8competition ENC 2.0 Diff. top 2: 16.0 Diff. top 2: 32.5 Diff. top 2: 14.3 L.A. Lacalle 48.3 J. Larran˜ aga 66.0 L.A. Lacalle 57.1 J.A. Ramı´rez 32.3 L.A. Lacalle 33.5 J. Larran˜ aga 42.8 A. Volonte´ 10.8 C. Maeso 0.4 I. Riet Correa 0.1 A´ . Ramos 7.9 e

A. Garcı´a 0.7 Outcomes ction FA Hegemonic Net electoral growth 9.5 No competition/ Net electoral growth 11.6 Well-balanced Net electoral growth 22.1 candidate ENC 1.4unique candidate ENC 1.0competition ENC 2.3 Diff. top 2: 64.8 Diff. top 2: 100.0 Diff. top 2: 12.4 T. Va´ zquez 82.4 T. Va´ zquez 100.0 J. Mujica 52.0 D. Astori 17.6 D. Astori 39.7 M. Cara´ mbula 8.3 PI No competition/ Net electoral growth 1.9 No competition/ Net electoral growth 0.6

unique candidate ENC 1.0unique candidate ENC 1.0 847 Diff. top 2: 100.0 Diff. top 2: 100.0 P. Mieres 100.0 P. Mieres 100.0

Continued Table 1 Continued 848

1999 2004 2009 alaetr Affairs Parliamentary

Type of primary ENC and candidates with Type of primary ENC and candidates with Type of primary ENC and candidates with their share of party vote their share of party vote their share of party vote

AP No competition/ Net electoral growth 0.7 unique candidate ENC 1.0 Diff. top 2: 100.0 J.R. Rodrı´guez 100.0 UC Net electoral growth 0.13 No competition/ Net electoral growth 20.01 ENC 1.0unique candidate ENC 1.0 Diff. top 2: 51.6 Diff. top 2: 100.0 L. Pieri 75.8 A. Lamorte 100 A. Lamorte 24.2 PT No competition/ Net electoral growth 20.02 No competition/ Net electoral growth 0.02 unique candidate ENC 1.0unique candidate ENC 1.0 Difference top 2: 100.0 Diff. top 2: 100.0 R. Ferna´ ndez 100.0 R. Ferna´ ndez 100.0 PL Hegemonic Net electoral growth 0.1 candidate ENC 1.6 Diff. top 2: 61.5 J. Vera 76.6 R. Dı´az 15.1 J. Curotto 8.3 PIN No competition/ Net electoral growth 0.4 unique candidate ENC 1.0 Diff. top 2: 100.0 V. Lissidini 100 NE No competition/ Net electoral growth 20.6 unique candidate ENC 1.0 Diff. top 2: 100.0 R. Michelini 100.0 Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 849

Table 2 Effective number of presidential candidates and its impact on party electoral perform- ance (based on sub-national results for each party)

Coefficient Standard error

Effective number of candidates 0.341** 0.056 Squared effective number of candidates 20.087** 0.014 National government 20.172** 0.015 Departmental government 20.008 0.012 Frente Amplio 0.089** 0.021 Partido Nacional 20.070* 0.026 Partido Colorado 20.002 0.022 Union Cı´vica 20.004 0.023 Partido Intransigente 0.002 0.023 Constant 20.250** 0.046 Adj R-squared 0.546 R-squared 0.565 Prob . F 0.000 Number of obs 224 F(9, 214) 30.43

*p , 0.01, **p , 0.001

This model departs from Buquet and Chasquetti’s in that it includes the squared term of ENPC to test the expected curvilinear effects it might have.21 I expect this term to be negative, thus generating an inverse-U shape, as suggested by the idea that there is an ‘optimal’ level of competition and that net electoral growth decreases as one departs from that point. This model also includes a dummy for whether the party under consideration is the governing party in the national government and another accounting for whether the party consid- ered is the governing party in the municipal administration (assuming that, re- gardless of the number of candidates, governing parties are typically penalised; Altman et al., 1999). The results presented in Table 2 are based on only those parties with an imme- diate electoral past. I have also run a similar model (not shown) relaxing the uni- verse of analysis to include those parties that have not run in the previous electoral cycle as independent parties.22 While it could be argued that this relax- ation might include parties that could be defined as ‘marginal’ or ‘insignificant,’

21Anytime the quadratic transformation of a variable is included, multicollinearity problems arise. Yet, including a quadratic variable along its linear attribute follows several works on democratization including Bollen and Jackman (1985); Lipset et al. (1993); Mainwaring and Pe´rez-Lin˜a´n (2003) and is widely accepted. 22These parties’ net electoral growth was always positive, as they did not compete in the previous electoral cycle. 850 Parliamentary Affairs and that the immediate link between the results of primaries and their subsequent electoral performance could be mediated by other phenomena, it is interesting to note that, though the universe of analysis increases by about 30%, the stability of coefficients and their statistical significance remain remarkable. The results of the models provide more precise, empirical evidence of the phenomenon under consideration, while remaining consistent with the more impressionistic picture previously depicted by Buquet and Chasquetti. Indeed, when considering those parties that competed in the previous electoral cycle, an ENPC of 1.95 seems an optimal way to channel internal attrition; as one departs from that number, net electoral growth starts to decrease (estimation not shown). Highly disputed internal elections cannot be understood in Uruguay except as new ‘packaging’ of the traditional catch-all nature and aspirations of parties. One of the most notable effects of the DSV was the increasing proliferation of lists sup- porting the same candidate (Pin˜eiro, 2004, 2007). The multiplying effect allowed candidates to expand their constituency bases, and the major problem was then how to support the whole system of patronage. The explosion of voting lists, as shown in Table 1 above, could be a synchronic adaptation of the DSV to the in- ternal elections’ institutional frame. Thus, this is a natural movement and should not surprise anyone. By expanding the offer of lists, parties appeal to different segments of society, allowing them to rake in more votes. For example, in the pri- maries of 2009, Alberto Perdomo ran on 204 lists of the . He pre- sented a list for almost every small town in the district of Canelones (the second largest in the country), and El Paı´s argues that more than 18,000 people were approached to be candidates on his lists.23 This is by no means casual: rather, these are partisan strategies that allow party cadres to show their political lever- age, ‘mark’ their votes, show their real work and then receive their corresponding share of political rewards (Altman, 2004). The degree of competition has its own impact on the presidential formulae that parties advance for the general election. Actually, studying how ODN decided on the vice-presidential candidates reveals quite a bit about the parties’ previous internal competence. The historical record thus shows that parties come out of the primaries rather divided. Although it is typically believed that nominating the second most voted candidate as vice president is a clear sign of party unity, in just 3 out of the 10 cases where there was internal competition the second most voted candidate was nominated for that office (the Partido Col- orado in 1999 with Batlle and Hierro; the Partido Nacional in 2009 with Lacalle and Larran˜aga; and, also in 2009, the Frente Amplio with Mujica and Astori). In the other seven cases, the ODN chose other candidates (from other party leaders

23El Paı´s, 3 June 2009. Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 851 who did not contest the internal election, to famous football players on the Uruguayan national team).

5. Conclusions This research extends the scope of the current literature on primaries and their impact by studying what are probably the most open and inclusive party primar- ies in the region, and maybe even in the democratic world: the party primaries of Uruguay. In this country, all parties competing in the electoral game held primar- ies in a concurrent, obligatory, binding, open manner and were constrained by the ‘Sore Loser Law’. These primaries have been established long enough to at least allow for rela- tively sophisticated analysis. However, the fact that Uruguay has to date had just three complete electoral cycles does impose some limitations on the conclu- sions of this research and their generalisability. Clearly, I would have liked to have been able to frame my conclusions in a comparative or more generalisable fashion. But for this to be possible, either we need more countries to adopt these types of primaries, as Argentina has very recently done, or we have to wait for additional primaries to be held in Uruguay. The three last, complete Uruguayan electoral cycles offer a unique opportunity to illuminate this phenomenon, particularly by tackling some of the major recur- rent questions on the topic. These include whether extremist leaders are normally elected, and whether there is an optimal level of competition. My research on pri- maries in Uruguay supports the idea that the answer to both of these questions is ‘yes’. On the question of extremist leaders, it is hard to argue that mandatory party primaries provide a much better mechanism for selecting candidates than the traditional DSV Uruguay had prior to the reforms of 1996 (Buquet, 2003; Altman et al., 2006). Again, since the DSV forced intra-party rivals to focus their campaigns more on inter-partisan rivalries, it allowed internal party choice without yielding strenuous and divisive internal fights. Primary winners tend to be ‘extremists’ in relation to the median voter. However, this has not always been the case, and it is also unclear that these relatively extreme candidates are necessarily poor general election competitors, perhaps because every party obtains sub-optimal primary results. As to whether there is an optimal level of competitive, the notion of a well- balanced primary contest implies that, in addition to running an effective number of candidates (close to two), parties should work to minimise confron- tation between the front runners. There is a very fine line parties need to walk: while it is healthy to have a competitive primary, it is also important to show unity. Although there are only three elections to consider, Uruguay’s results par- tially support these hypotheses. Moreover, as Buquet and Chasquetti underline, 852 Parliamentary Affairs

‘holding primaries independently of the general election produced two additional consequences: (i) it lengthened the political campaigns and therefore, (ii) it increased the costs of campaigns and electoral processes’ (Buquet and Chasquetti, 2008, p. 327). It is generally assumed that these are undesirable consequences for a political system, especially in a country where political or government spending is of high concern. As seen here, Uruguayan internal elections solve some problems but generate new ones. They democratise politics by giving citizens a more direct say in the selection of party authorities and candidates for the presidency, but this say is not always ‘wise’ as extremist leaders tend to be elected.24 The obligation for each party to present a unique presidential candidate was a way of solving one of the chronic demands for changing the political system. Under the old system, before Uruguay’s current system of primaries was insti- tuted, the winner of the presidency was many times the candidate from the frac- tion that received the most votes within the party that received the most votes, but not the candidate with the absolute highest number of votes.25 Primaries amplify internal disputes as a ‘prisoner’s dilemma structure of incentives is clear, and cooperative solutions are difficult to find’ (Buquet and Chasquetti, 2008, p. 327). Indeed, some of these concerns about internal elections pushed scholars to underline the advantages of the traditional Uruguayan DSV system.26 There is an increasing demand for expanding the use of primary elections worldwide as a way of democratising politics and relaxing the influence of party machines in the selection of leaders. More than a few international organi- sations, pundits, academics and sometimes even politicians believe primaries would help to remedy some of the ills affecting contemporary representative

24They may contribute to final outcomes that participating citizens themselves do not desire. Unfortunately, the electoral architecture of Uruguay—combining the enforcement of voting in some elections but not others, but where all contending parties are forced to participate, precludes as systematic an analysis as the one carried out by Boyd (1989) for the USA, or Carey and Polga-Hecimovich for several Latin American countries. 25Actually, each party presenting a unique presidential candidate had been a traditional demand of several political groups in the Uruguayan milieu, particularly the Frente Amplio, which since its creation in 1971 had always defended the idea. Of course, this is not to ignore the short-term interests of the reformers in 1996 who wanted to close the door to a potential Frente Amplio victory in 1999.

26Actually, there is little consensus among political scientists regarding the advantages of Uruguay’s current system for selecting presidential candidates. Of the 60 political scientists consulted for this research, almost 75% (n ¼ 44) also expressed judgements about the electoral cycle of the country. Just 21% of them were in favour of preserving all of the post-1996 reforms; the other 79% was evenly divided between those wanting to go back to the pre-1996 system and those proposing miscellaneous reforms (including, for instance, changing to a parliamentary system). Universal Party Primaries and General Election Outcomes 853 democracies (domination of politics by party machines, civic disaffection and the like). As this is one of the very first studies dealing with concurrent, obligatory, binding and open partisan primaries, much more work needs to be done in this area to enable us to reach more definitive conclusions.

Acknowledgements I am grateful to Daniel Buquet, John Carey, Rossana Castiglioni, Daniel Chas- quetti, Juan Pablo Luna, Anı´bal Pe´rez-Lin˜a´n, Rafael Pin˜eiro, Gidi Rahat, Fer- nando Rosenblatt, Elaine Thomas and Ignacio Zuasna´bar. I also want to thank the 55 Uruguayan colleagues who participated in the questionnaire used for asses- sing leaders’ left-right placement. Finally, I want to express gratitude to the three anonymous referees of Parliamentary Affairs for their constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article. This research is framed within FONDECYT’s Project No. 1110368 and the Millennium Nucleus for the Study of Stateness and Democracy in Latin America, Project NS100014. All caveats apply.

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