Creating Partisans: the Organizational Roots of New Parties in Latin America

Creating Partisans: The Organizational Roots of New Parties in Latin America by Mathias Poertner A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Ruth Berins Collier, Co-chair Professor Thad Dunning, Co-chair Professor Leonardo Arriola Professor Pradeep Chhibber Professor David Collier Professor Edward Miguel Spring 2018 Creating Partisans: The Organizational Roots of New Parties in Latin America Copyright 2018 by Mathias Poertner 1 Abstract Creating Partisans: The Organizational Roots of New Parties in Latin America by Mathias Poertner Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science University of California, Berkeley Professor Ruth Berins Collier, Co-chair Professor Thad Dunning, Co-chair The frequent emergence of new parties is a feature of democracies almost everywhere. While most of these new parties remain ephemeral, some manage to establish stable ties with voters and win substantial electoral support over repeated elections. This divergence raises the question why some new parties are able to take root in society, establish stable ties with voters, and successfully compete in elections over time, while others fail to do so. Despite a vibrant literature on both the stability of party identification and de- alignment away from traditional parties, we do not have a good understanding yet of why some new parties succeed in taking root in society, while others fail to do so. This dissertation attempts to fill this gap. It explores different paths that new parties take to build mass support, i.e. to secure electoral support and build partisan attachments in the electorate, in the context of the recent wave of party formation in Latin America. It seeks to explain how new parties come to choose different mobilization strategies and how voters in turn respond to these different party strategies. With the decline of unions, which played a central role in the historic founding of mass parties, much of the recent literature has concentrated on parties’ direct appeals to voters and explained variation in success to secure support in terms of the type of direct appeals, e.g. based on class vs. ethnic interests or identities or charismatic appeals. In this study, I consider different types of direct appeals and also explore organizationally mediated strategies, i.e. appeals that engage voters through societal organizations. I find that organizationally mediated strategies can secure electoral support very effectively and yield durable voter ties by socializing organization members into identifying with the party. Even though the mediating role that civil society organizations can play has been 2 largely overlooked with the decline of labor unions, new types of organizations— particularly indigenous organizations, peasant unions, and informal sector unions—play similarly important roles in democratic societies today. While the existing scholarship has examined the formation of these organizations and their role in politicizing ethnic or class cleavages, little attention has been paid to the various ways in which different forms of party-organization linkages might influence vote choice and the emergence of partisanship. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, I explain the adoption of different party mobilization strategies by focusing on the intra-elite dynamics during parties’ founding moments, the period before the party contests its first major election. Two features of the founding moments—one internal to the new party, the other one external to it—are key: (1) the cohesion of the coalition of party leaders and organizational allies and (2) the credibility of other attractive parties in the party system. These factors shape early-on whether a party-organization tie becomes institutionalized by adopting routinized rules and mechanisms that govern how candidates will be selected and factional disagreements will be settled. Whether party-organization ties become institutionalized, in turn, establishes whether a new party can rely on organizationally mediated strategies or is restricted to employing direct appeals only. Furthermore, I argue that the institutionalization of a linkage can provide the basis for different types of organizationally mediated strategies and resulting party structures, depending on the structure and resources of the organizational allies. In order to explain new parties’ ability to create mass support, I then focus on voters’ responses to the different party strategies, in a second step. I show that organizationally mediated appeals can help parties obtain electoral support more effectively than most types of direct appeals. Furthermore, if the underlying party- organization linkages are institutionalized, mediated appeals also yield durable voter- party ties by socializing organization members into identifying with the party itself. Drawing on social identity and self-categorization theory, I contend that societal organizations, which serve as highly relevant and immediate reference groups to their members, provide social spaces in which socialization into new parties can occur, if the organization is organically linked to a party. This argument is tested in the context of the recent wave of party formation in Latin America. My dissertation compares three major new parties, Bolivia’s MAS, Ecuador’s Alianza PAIS, and Mexico’s MORENA, with each other and with other new parties. Using a multi-method research strategy based on 24 months of fieldwork in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Mexico, this research combines insights from over 230 in-depth interviews with representatives of parties and societal organizations with analyses of original and existing surveys, census data, and election returns, archival research, ethnographic work, and a series of novel experiments conducted in the field. i To my parents ii Contents 1 Introduction: The Organizational Roots of New Parties 1 1.1 Mass Support for New Parties ............................................................... 5 Definitions ............................................................................... 6 1.2 Explaining Mass Support: Existing Research ........................................ 8 1.2.1 Explanations of Electoral Support ............................................... 8 1.2.2 Explanations of Partisan Attachments ....................................... 11 1.3 The Mediating Role of Societal Organizations .................................... 13 1.3.1 Societal Organizations .............................................................. 14 1.3.2 Contemporary Societal Organizations ....................................... 16 1.3.3 Societal Organizations in Latin America ................................... 17 1.3.4 The Role of Organizations for Participation .............................. 18 1.4 Founding Moments, Party Strategies, and Mass Support: The Argument ..................................................................................... 20 1.5 Methods & Research Design ............................................................... 24 1.6 Organization of the Study ................................................................... 28 2 Founding Moments: Founding Coalitions and Party Strategies 29 2.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 29 2.1.1 Party Strategies ......................................................................... 29 2.1.2 Overview of the Chapter ........................................................... 31 2.2 Founding Coalitions: Proto-leaders and Organizational Allies ............. 32 2.3 Strategic Options: Instrumental vs. Institutionalized Party-Organization Ties .................. 35 2.4 Founding Moments ............................................................................. 36 2.5 Resulting Dynamics ............................................................................ 37 2.5.1 From the Perspective of Proto-leaders ....................................... 38 2.5.2 From the Perspective of Organizations ...................................... 40 2.5.3 Stability of Institutionalized Party-Organization Ties ................ 41 2.5.4 Resulting Party Mobilization Strategies .................................... 43 3 Evidence: Development of Party Strategies in Three New Parties 46 3.1 Introduction ........................................................................................ 46 3.1.1 Founding Moments ................................................................... 47 3.1.2 Institutional Consequences ........................................................ 48 3.1.3 Mobilization Strategies Available to New Parties ...................... 51 iii 3.2 MAS in Bolivia ................................................................................... 52 3.2.1 Founding Moments: Joint Participation in High-stake Protests as Moments of Solidarity .......................................................... 52 Moments of Solidarity: First Wave of Protests ....................... 54 Moments of Solidarity: Second Wave of Protests ................... 56 3.2.2 Institutional Consequences ........................................................ 57 The Pact of Unity and the National Coordination for Change . 59 Party Congress, National Board, and Candidate Selection ...... 62 Resulting Party Structure and Mobilization Strategies ............ 68 Stability of Ties.....................................................................

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