Business and New Right-Wing Parties in Latin America. Argentina and Colombia in Comparative Perspective

GABRIEL VOMMARO; LAURA WILLS OTERO

Congreso; APSA Conference; 2020

American Political Science Association

According to sociological definitions (Gibson, 1996), right-wing parties have their core constituency in the upper class and the business world. However, we know little about the mechanisms that these parties use to establish such relationships. The formation of new right-wing parties in Latin America offers an opportunity to study these mechanisms. In this paper we analyze the strategies that the Democratic Center (CD) in Colombia and the Republican Proposal (PRO) in Argentina have developed to attract business support. Although these two cases differ significantly, the outcome is similar: both parties were successful in mobilizing entrepreneurs. What factors explain why new right-wing parties attract business people to join their ranks, or to support candidates within them? We find that in different political and party systems contexts, as well as in countries with different characteristics of the private sector, some of the political strategies employed by the right-wing parties’ founding leaders, and the use of fear as an incentive for electoral mobilization, were presented similarly in the two cases. This leads us to conclude that these are explanatory and substantive variables that account for the involvement of business people in said parties. We compare these two cases making use of the most different system design, and both quantitative and qualitative information such as electoral data, interviews with key informants, special surveys to argentinian legislators, observations of party meetings, newspapers, among others.