The Fates of Political Parties Institutional Crisis, Continuity, and Change in Latin America

Political parties in the developing world often face serious electoral crises; from one election to the next, parties can be decisively voted out of national office. What happens to a party that experiences this kind of voter rejection? The literature suggests it will disappear, leaving the party system vulnerable to the inexperience of new political actors. The Fates of Political Parties offers a more nuanced perspective: focusing on a number of individual Latin American countries as well as the region as a whole, it identifies considerable variation regarding how parties survive and even revive after an electoral crisis. The book revitalizes the study of parties as complex entities that rely on a potentially diverse set of resources to remain active in politics. It demonstrates that parties can be remarkably enduring institutions; surviving and reviving parties represent instances of institutional stability. Where they endure, those parties can sustain competition and strengthen the democratic regime.

1. Introduction; 2. Political parties and their resources; 3. Explaining the fates of parties; 4. The resource wealth of parties after party-system collapse: the empirical record in the Andes; 5. Survival and revival in an atomized party system: Peru after 1992; 6. Survival and revival in a regionalized party system: Venezuela after 1998; 7. The difficulties of survival and revival in a hyper-fluid party system: Bolivia after 2005; 8. Conclusion: resources and the fates of parties.

Jennifer Cyr is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American studies at the University of Arizona. Her research focuses on political representation, identity, and democratization in Latin America.