Diminished Parties Democratic Representation in Contemporary Latin America

JUAN PABLO LUNA; RAFAEL PIÑEIRO RODRÍGUEZ; FERNANDO ROSENBLATT; GABRIEL VOMMARO

Cambridge University Press

Lugar: Nueva York; Año: 2021 p. 342

9781009072045

There is a resurgence of interest in political parties. This resurgent interest embraces a minimalist definition of political parties, according to which any group that competes in elections and receives a handful of votes qualifies as a political party. Parties, however, are expected to contribute to democratic representation, and the party politics literature has extensively shown that many ?parties? do not fulfill this expectation. These entities possess some but not all defining features of political parties and therefore can be considered diminished subtypes of the category. A thorough conceptualization of diminished subtypes could improve the analytical value of the study of political parties and of other forms of electoral political organizations. In the introduction to the edited volume we put forth a new typology of political parties?including diminished subtypes?based on the presence or absence of two primary attributes: horizontal coordination of ambitious politicians during electoral campaigns and while in office and vertical aggregation to electorally mobilize collective interests and to intermediate and channel collective demands. The volume builds upon the rich literature concerning political parties that highlights the ways in which many party organizations are failing to fulfill their representational role in contemporary democracies. The empirical chapters that follow the introduction apply the conceptual framework to analyze seventeen parties in twelve Latin American countries.