EXPLAINING PROGRAMMATIC LINKAGES AND PARTISAN COMPETITION PATTERNS

Introduction

The next two chapters present a historical narrative on the nature and evolution of partisan competition in Chile and Uruguay analyzing the extent and nature of cleavage mobilization in each country and how it evolved from independence to the present day. This is not an exhaustive account, but it highlights specific historical junctures that are crucial to formulating hypotheses about the current patterns of programmatic competition at work in each system.

Specifically, I will discuss the divergent historical evolution of both party-systems (Collier and Collier 1991; Dix 1989; Roberts forthcoming; Rueschemeyer, Huber and Stephens 1992) and its manifestation in clearly distinct pre-authoritarian characteristics (Collier and Collier 1991; Dix 1989) and divergent experiences under the bureaucratic -authoritarian regimes that ruled both societies from the early 1970s to the late 1980s (Diamond 1999; Linz and Stepan 1996; Stepan 1984). These diverse experiences make different adaptation strategies in the context of the demise of ISI particularly salient (Castiglioni 2005; Filgueira and Filgueira 1997a; Filgueira and Filgueira 1997b; Roberts 2002; Roberts forthcoming; Roberts 1998).

This chapter frames the historical narrative by elaborating on the characteristics of voter-representative linkages (an operational proxy for the dependent variable) and its theorized determinants in the long and short-run. In this regard, I first present a general set of hypotheses and then a stylized causal framework that explains different party-voter linkage strategies by focusing on the interaction between capacities, opportunities, and grievance mobilization potential. This framework borrows from the insights of Kitschelt et.al. (forthcoming), which

lend more parsimony to the hypothesized causal relationships that are first presented in my general set of hypotheses. I also discuss the “critical juncture” model in order to propose an alternative (soft) path-dependent approach, to explain the nature of representative linkages in both countries. Finally, to avoid “conceptual stretching,” the last section provides a theoretical and empirical definition of issue-divisions that can eventually become the basis for partisan mobilization and competition in programmatically-oriented systems, setting the basis for their empirical analysis in Part II of this work.

The Quality of Representation: Definition, Operationalization, and Research Hypotheses In this dissertation, the quality of representation in a given system is defined as: the extent to which political parties have well-structured and stable ideological commitments that constitute the basis for: a) the link between the party and its constituency; b) the electoral competition among parties; and c) the policy making process. This definition considers political parties as the main representative agents in a democratic polity and seeks to capture three fundamental dimensions that lie beneath our understanding of political representation.

First, it accounts for mandate representation or the degree of party responsiveness to the preferences of its constituency (Dalton 1985; Iversen 1994a; Iversen 1994b; Powell 1982; Powell 1989; Przeworski, Stokes and Manin 1999b; Ranney 1962). For this to take place, responsible party government requires at least three additional conditions implied by the definition: 1) policy divergence among the parties contesting the election; 2) policy stability on the part of the parties contesting the election; and 3) policy voting on the part of the electorate (Adams 2001).

Second, by considering the policy-making process, this definition incorporates the notion of accountability representation, which takes place when 1) voters act retrospectively, voting to retain the incumbent party only when that party acts in their best interest; and 2) the incumbent party selects policies in order to be reelected (Alesina 1988; Przeworski, Stokes and Manin 1999a; Przeworski, Stokes and Manin 1999b).

Finally, the definition explicitly acknowledges the organizational factors that trigger mandate and accountability representation. For instance, the degrees to which parties mobilize activists and devise intra-organizational decision-making mechanisms are central components of this organizational dimension. It should be noted, however, that not every organizational articulation leads to programmatic representation. On the contrary, clientelistic machines could be extraordinarily organizationally developed, while at the same time, detrimental for the quality of (universalistic) political representation by parties.3 Complementarily, the core organizational cadres of a political party may well be unrepresentative of the voter. Finally, it is also possible to think of alternative situations in which reasonable aggregate representation at the national level lacks its organizational counterpart at the district level.4 Therefore, it is necessary to account for both the strength of the link between a political party and its constituency and the nature of that link –e.g. programmatic vs. clientelistic (Kitschelt 2000).

Simply put, parties can either relate to voters on the basis of indirect exchanges around programmatic platforms, relate to voters directly through particularistic exchanges, or in any intermediate combination of both. Drawing on this basic definition, I present below a more elaborated typology of linkage-types introducing scenarios in which individual candidates have preeminence over partisan organizations in structuring representation in a particular system.

On explanatory grounds, this work departs from the two classic explanations of clientelism (or more generally, non-programmatic linking), namely: the culturalist and the developmental thesis. Whereas the former explains clientelism as a permanent trait of certain cultures, the latter sees clientelism as a political arrangement that corresponds to traditional societies as opposed to modern ones. Both explanations have proved unsatisfactory (Piattoni

3_{Piattoni (2001) argues on the need to overcome our normative bias against clientelism. She sees}

clientelism as a form of interest representation which acts as a “a counterbalance to rigid and often clogged institutional channels”. According to her, current conditions in Europe (globalization, European integration, and the increase of particularistic politics), might favor the resurgence and resilence of clientelism, which in turn could help to stabilize contemporary European democracies. Nonetheless, even if clientelism is assesed in terms of normatively neutral criteria, it seems clear that, when widespread, it is conducive to political co-optation and democracy is significantly devalued.

4

That is the argument presented by Chibber (2001) for India, Spain and Algeria, where in the absence of dense associational life, political cleavages were created from above (instead of emerging from societal divisions), on the basis of the strategic policy competition of parties at the state or national level.

2001; Shefter 1994). Departing from these traditional views and following the lead of Shefter and Piattoni, I seek to explain the different types of representation defined above as the result of given exchange relations between voters and politicians, which can in turn be explained by the strategic considerations of both.

What constrains those strategic options on the part of politicians (supply) and voters (demand)? According to the following general hypothesis, those strategic options can be understood on the basis of a combination of structural, historic -institutional, and agency-related factors.

Hypothesis: The divergent patterns of representation across systems can be explained on the basis of the interaction between: a) the historical development of each party- system and its legacies (experience with democracy, the degree of institutionalization of the party system, the relationship between interests groups and parties, the configuration of partisan identities and subcultures); b) the political economy of structural reforms and its impact on state structures, decentralization, and the resulting room for parties to articulate alternative policy-packages to represent divergent societal interests; c) the level of interest aggregation in society, resulting from a combination of a and b; d) agency on the part of each party (determined both by its ideological and organizational imprints and by the party’s relative access to media and other campaign resources); and e) the mediating influence that electoral institutions exert on factors a, c, and d.

The following hypotheses translate the macro-logic implicit in the previous statement to the district level and state directional relations between the independent variables and the quality of political representation.

Hypothesis 1: All things being equal, different social structures will produce