Levitsky and Cameron 2003

Levitsky, Steven, and Maxwell A. Cameron. 2003. "Democracy without Parties? Political Parties and Regime Change in Fujimori's Peru". Latin American Politics and Society. 45 (3): 1-33.

1. Introduction
1. In the 1990s, party system in Peru totally disintegrated (1)
2. The weak and fragile opposition failed to check Fujimori’s dismantling of institutional limits on his power...he only fell out of power after a corruption scandal
3. Goals:
1. explain party system decomposition (2)
1. Fujimori’s success really drove this home
2. regime implications of a party system collapse
1. political figures stopped acting as horizontal checks to power
2. proliferation of candidate-centered movements eroded oppositions ability to act collectively
3. prospects for rebuilding parties in Peru?
1. current politicians lack the incentive and capacity to build new parties
2. Why Parties Matter in a Democracy (3)
1. parties act as cues to voters (Mainwaring and Scully 1995, Mainwaring 1999)
2. parties also allow short-sighted politicians make longer-term plans (Aldrich 1995)
3. Parties protect against one group taking complete control, politics becomes the arena for all powerful actors to duke it out (army, working class, etc etc), rather than in the streets
4. Strong parties increase governability (3-4)
5. parties help hold elected leaders accountable (4)
6. parties limit power of executive
7. parties socialize elites, thereby limiting power of outsiders
8. PARTIES FACILITATE COLLECTIVE ACTION (5)
3. Democratic Breakdown and Party System Collapse in Peru (6)
1. Party Crisis, Outsider Politics, and the 1992 Autogolpe
1. In the late 1980s parties fell into crisis
1. radically changed electorate:
1. final expansion to universal suffrage
2. large scale urban migration
3. expansion of urban informal sector
2. at the same time, there was a deep recession (6-7)
3. AND the Sendero Luminoso guerilla movement
2. In 1990 political outsider ALberto Fujimori won the presidency (thanks to a few contingent things) (7)
3. Fujimori’s election further weakened democracy
1. Peru was experiencing a democratic collapse, and Fujimori had no party to help him combat this
2. so Fujimori opted for an authoritarian strategy to save his presidency
2. Authoritarian Success and the Rise of Political “Independents” (8)
1. Fujimori’s 1992 autogolpe successfully convinced the electorate that it was necessary to overturn “false democracy” (Paredes Castro et al. 1992)
1. Fujimori got very popular
2. Fujimorista factions won big majority of elections in 1992
2. Fujimori (in 1992) able to defeat BOTH inflation AND Sendero Luminoso
3. Peru is only place where anti-party president was able to end economic crisis (9)
1. when opposition parties defended democratic institutions, popular opinion was actually AGAINST them/that issue
4. TWO LESSONS for Peruvian politicians at that time (10)
1. defending pre-autogolpe democracy was not viable (many adopted ambiguous positions re: autogolpe)
2. parties no longer needed (Fujimori didn’t create one)
5. New Parties = “disposable”, one-election vehicles (11-12)
1. “Peru’s party system was created anew at each election” (12)
4. Party Weakness, Caesarism, and the Failure of the Democratic Opposition
1. Atomized system of politics was consolidated in 1990s (13)
1. parties played little role in Fujimori’s downfall
2. environment where defense of democracy and party-building were widely perceived as unprofitable
2. Destruction of Mechanism or Horizontal Accountability
1. between 1995 and 2000, Fujimori dismantled most checks of the 1993 Constitution (14)
1. when Constitutional Tribunal (TC) tried to block Fujimori, Fujimori simply dismantled TC (15)
2. opposition did not have enough elected officials to call a referendum
1. Peruvians opposed Fujimori’s abuses, but could not channel opposition/protests into a sustainable movement
2. atomized politicians shied away from taking on the government, further hindered cohesion of opposition (16)
3. The 2000 Transition: Opposition Weakness and Collapse from Within
1. Fujimori systematically oppress opposition candidates in 2000 (17)
2. Fujimori caught up in scandal when his party, Perú 2000, didn’t technically get enough real signatures to have Fujimori on the ballot
1. yet major parties did not fight this scandal out
3. In second round of elections, remaining opposition leader refused to compete against Fujimori, damaged his legitimacy (18-19)
1. Fujimori still won, and faced protest from internal and external sources (19)
2. BUT none of these sources were able to dislodge Fujimori from power
4. Fujimori was even able to construct a new governing coalition by bribing and coopting individual members of the opposition to become members of his bloc (these politicians became known as “transfugas”) (19-20)
1. party weakness meant the parties had no mechanism to induce these politicians to stay in the fold (20)
5. BUT, then a video surfaced in 2001 of a transfuga literally being paid to join Fujimori (21)
1. Congress and the President both lost legitimacy
2. Montesinos, Fujimori’s head of Intelligence, had an large video archive of Fujimori/ista bribery
3. Fujimori resigns rather than be open to blackmail
4. Change and Continuity in the 2001 Elections
1. The country’s democratic institutions were thoroughly reformed after Fujimori resigned
2. But electoral politics remained very candidate-centered (22)
5. The Prospects for Part (Re)Building in Peru (25)
1. Resignation of Fujimori means government no longer repressing opposition candidates
2. Institutionalists: Institutions were fixed-ish after 2001, which is good
3. BUT historical-structuralists:
1. no stable parties have been created since full suffrage (24), usually stable parties come after big social cleavages (23-24)
2. Changes in class structure and technology have atomized voters, and also made it easier to access these voters despite their atomization (24)
3. mass media also means politicians don’t need party mechanisms
4. 1990s may have been a critical juncture for party system in Peru...since established parties failed, politicians have had little incentive to create new ones (outside personalistic vehicles) (25)
1. What new parties do emerge will likely be loose coalitions with tenuous linkages to society (26)
6. CONCLUSION:  Democracy without Parties?
1. without parties, increased likelihood of (27)
1. executive-legislative conflict
2. executive abuse of power
3. corruption
4. successful outsider/anti-system candidates
2. parties provide democratic goods (see lit review), without them these goods aren’t provided
3. CONUNDRUM:
1. “...parties are among the least credible democratic institutions in Latin America today, yet democracy without them is nearly inconceivable”