Democratic regimes in contemporary Latin America have been plagued by exceptionally high levels of electoral volatility and the demise of many traditional political parties. Previous research has suggested that this volatility can be attributed largely to the region-wide economic crisis of the 1980s; yet, volatility has increased in the 1990s during a period of generalized economic improvement. Despite insights from research on European politics, there is no study which fully explores the impact of political institutions and social cleavages on electoral volatility in Latin America. Likewise, there is little understanding of why traditional party systems would survive and adapt to the exigencies of a new era in some countries while decomposing in others.
The main objectives of this project are to identify the sources of electoral volatility in contemporary Latin America and to explain why some parties and party systems have adapted more successfully than others to the new era of market liberalism. The project begins with a pooled time series regression analysis of aggregate electoral volatility in both presidential and legislative elections in 16 Latin American countries since the onset of the most recent wave of democratization in 1978. This statistical analysis provides a test of three basic theoretical explanations of electoral volatility: (1) the economic voting model, which associates electoral volatility with aggregate economic performance; (2) institutional arguments which link volatility to party system attributes or unstable rules-of-the-game; and (3) structural explanations which associate electoral stability with the organizational "closure" of class cleavages.
The second part of this project complements the large-N statistical analysis with a more detailed comparative analysis of two cases of party system decomposition (Peru and Venezuela), one case of adaptation (Chile), and one intermediate case (Argentina). The comparative design focuses attention on the political characteristics of the "critical juncture" in which nations with labor-mobilizing party systems make the transition from a state-led to a market-oriented model of development. Party system adaptation or decomposition is hypothezied to be a function of the distribution of political costs and rewards during this critical juncture and reinforcement or diffusion of established sociopolitical cleavages. Public opinion surveys from each of the four countries will be used to measure gross (that is, individual-level) electoral volatility and identify changes in the social or class composition of support for different parties. This combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods should shed new light on the erosion, adaptation, and transformation of representative institutions in Latin America, while enhancing scholarly understanding of the conditions for democratic stability.
