Programmatic Political Competition in Latin America: Recognizing the Role Played by Political Parties in Determining the Nature of Party-Voter Linkages
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Programmatic Political Competition in Latin America: Recognizing the Role Played by Political Parties in Determining the Nature of Party-Voter Linkages A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Kevin Edward Lucas IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY David J. Samuels October 2015 © Kevin Edward Lucas, 2015 Acknowledgements While researching and writing this dissertation, I benefited greatly from the assistance and support of a seemingly endless list of individuals. Although I extend my most sincere gratitude to every single person who in one way or another contributed to my completion of the pages that follow, I do want to single out a few individuals for their help along the way. It is very unlikely that the unexpected development of programmatic party-voter linkages in El Salvador would have made it onto my radar as a potential dissertation topic had the Peace Corps not sent me to that beautiful yet complicated country in June 2001. During the nearly five years I spent living and working in La Laguna, Chalatenango, I had the good fortune of meeting a number of people who were more than willing to share their insights into Salvadoran politics with the resident gringo . There is no question in my mind that my understanding of Salvadoran politics would be far more incomplete, and this dissertation far less interesting, without the education I received from my conversations with Concepción Ayala and family, Señor Godoy, Don Bryan (RIP), Don Salomón Serrano ( QEPD ), and the staff of La Laguna’s Alcaldía Municipal . Also, for accepting me as part of their family and for sharing their stories with me, I express my heart-felt gratitude to the Ramírez, Reyes, Menjívar, and Pineda families. My dissertation owes an obvious and enormous debt to the seventy-three individuals in El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Guatemala who volunteered their time to discuss party politics in their country by consenting to be interviewed and/or to complete the Q-sort process. Party staff and government officials in all three countries were (with very few exceptions) extremely accommodating as they helped me identify suitable interview subjects, recruit Q-participants, and collect party and government documents. Felipe Vargas, Orlando Cocar, Demetrio Reyes, Guillermo Portillo, Rocio Abarca Sánchez, Ivannia Jawnyj Vargas, Rafael Monge, Ruth Teresa Jácome Pinto, and Edgar Dedet all deserve special recognition for going out of their way to help me set up interviews, gain access to party materials, and/or identify valuable secondary sources. A number of fellow scholars have provided valuable comments on various aspects of my project. First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, David Samuels, for his feedback and guidance. Lisa Hilbink, Paul Goren, and Sarah Chambers made up the rest of a dissertation committee that provided many helpful comments and suggestions. William Jacoby, Will Barndt, Joy Langston, Elizabeth Zechmeister, Guillermo Rosas, Chris Federico, and Joanne Miller provided useful feedback on conference presentations and seminar papers related to this project. i Conversations with Marcela Villarrazo, Adolfo Garcé, Evelin Patricia Gutiérrez Castro, Alberto Salom, Ottón Solís, Ronald Alfaro Redondo, Rotsay Rosales, and Ciska Raventós provided me with an important opportunity to ensure that my argument regarding the critical role that the unification of the Left played in the development of programmatic political competition in El Salvador (and in Chile and Uruguay), and that the weakness of the Left has played in ensuring the persistence of non-programmatic political competition elsewhere in Latin America, would at the very least appear plausible to “native” scholars of party system development in the region. Last but certainly not least, I thank my mother Susan for her support and my lovely wife, María Luisa, for keeping me company as I conducted field research in El Salvador and Costa Rica, for helping to ensure the accuracy of my English-to-Spanish and Spanish-to-English translations, and for invaluable encouragement and moral support. ii Abstract In their examination of party-voter linkages in twelve Latin American democracies, Kitschelt et al . (2010) find evidence of programmatic political competition in only two countries: Chile and Uruguay. However, while my own analysis of party-voter linkages in contemporary Latin America confirms the presence of programmatic political competition in Chile and Uruguay, it also reveals that programmatic party-voter linkages are stronger in El Salvador – one of the region’s poorest countries, and a country with scant democratic history – than they are in either Chile or Uruguay. The fact that El Salvador contradicts the standard “sociological” model of party system development, which identifies both a long democratic history and a relatively high level of socioeconomic development as prerequisites for the development of programmatic political competition, is the primary empirical puzzle that motivates this dissertation. In response to the question of why programmatic political competition emerges in some countries but not in others, I argue that elite political agency, rather than the political and socioeconomic characteristics associated with the sociological model of party system development, determines the type of party-voter linkages that form in a given party system. More specifically, I contend that the presence of a unified Left that has achieved electoral success by actively promoting its ideological distinctiveness is the common link that explains the development of programmatic political competition in Chile, Uruguay, and El Salvador. To support this argument, I combine the analysis of cross-country public opinion surveys with case studies that detail party system development in Costa Rica, El Salvador, and Guatemala. Particularly instructive is the comparison between El Salvador, where programmatic party-voter linkages are much stronger than the standard sociological model would predict, and Costa Rica, where a relatively high level of socioeconomic development and a long democratic history have failed to generate programmatic political competition. Whereas my examination of the development of the Salvadoran party system demonstrates that the FMLN has played a crucial role in the development of programmatic political competition, my examination of party-voter linkages in Costa Rica shows how the weakness and disorganization of the Costa Rican Left has inhibited the development of programmatic political competition. iii Table of Contents List of Tables .......................................................................................................................... vi List of Figures ......................................................................................................................... viii List of Acronyms .................................................................................................................... ix Chapter One: The Path to Programmatic Political Competition ............................................. 1 1.1 Latin American Parties and Party Systems ............................................................. 6 1.2 Party Elites and the Nature of Party-Voter Linkages ............................................. 14 1.3 Guide to the Dissertation ........................................................................................ 21 Chapter Two: Programmatic Political Competition in Contemporary Latin America ........... 26 2.1 Predicting Programmatic Political Competition in Latin America ......................... 28 2.2 Left-Right Self-Placement and Voting Behavior ................................................... 31 2.3 The Meaningfulness of Left-Right Self-Placement in Latin America .................... 44 2.4 Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 51 Chapter Three: Time, Party Elites, and the Nature of Party-Voter Linkages ......................... 52 3.1 Political Capabilities, Opportunities, and Stakes .................................................... 54 3.2 Political Capabilities: Modernization Theory Redux ............................................. 56 3.3 Political Opportunities: Political Learning and Party Identification ....................... 58 3.4 Political Stakes: Social Cleavages and Critical Junctures ...................................... 64 3.5 The Critical Role of the Latin American Left ........................................................ 69 Chapter Four: Introduction to Central American Case Studies ............................................. 73 4.1 Contemporary Variation in Party System Development ........................................ 74 4.2 Three Branches off the Same Tree ......................................................................... 87 4.3 Summary of Case Studies ....................................................................................... 96 Chapter Five: The Development of Programmatic Party-Voter Linkages in El Salvador ...... 100 5.1 The Formation of ARENA and the FMLN ............................................................. 104 5.2 Charting the Emergence of Programmatic Party-Voter Linkages .......................... 115 5.3 Conclusions ............................................................................................................ 136 iv Chapter Six: Guatemala: War is not the Answer ...................................................................