Luna and Altman 2011

Luna, Juan Pablo, and David Altman. 2011. "Uprooted but Stable: Chilean Parties and the Concept of Party System Institutionalization". Latin American Politics and Society. 53 (2).

• Mainwaring and Scully (1995) identify four dimensions of party system institutionalization (PSI) (1)
• stability and regularity of party competition patterns
• the presence of party roots in society
• relative level of a party’s legitimacy in society
• well-developed party organizations, as opposed to electoral vehicles for personalistic leaders
• they also usually argue that correlation between the factors is positive and linear, meaning they tend to come in bundles
• but some examples of hybrid PSI, like Brazil with low-rootedness and high stability of party system (2)
• this study looks at CHile as a similarly partially high PSI case (2-3)
• critique that measure of electoral volatility is a problematic way to understand stability (4-5)
• in Chile, politically pacted parties mask volatility (5)
• but they still use the measure anyway
• but there are some grounds to state that the low volatility at the national level could be a mirage (6)
• party identifiers are not representative of the Chilean electorate (9)
• more than 85% of Chileans don’t identify with a political party, according to one survey
• Lots of non voters, and they tend to be young people (11)
• the correlation between left/right self-placements and substantive programmatic issues has weakened over time (12)
• people hardly note partisan explanations as the drive of their vote (13)
• education is becoming more indicative of voting behavior (12-13)
• party coalitions could be decreasing the salience of individual parties, but even the coalitions themselves have fewer people declaring themselves as adherents (14)
• Partisan elites control candidate nomination, leaving them with a great deal of power (16)
• incumbent candidates are virtually uncontested
• congressional members cannot count on their party’s local organizations, and increasingly need to set up their own parallel organizations to assure reelection
• Chilean party politics is becoming increasingly localized and personalistic, rise of independent candidates (18)
• Chilean paradox: voters display average levels of believing that voting behavior can cause political change, but also high levels of believing that change is not possible in the current system (20)
• electoral participation is plummeting (20-21)
• this suggest legitimacy of parties and electoral is weakening (20)
• Conclusion:
• Conventional wisdom sees Chile as a stable system with a virtuous policymaking process
• this article argues that there is stability, but may not have high levels of the other three PSI factors
• not that the article is predicting a collapse or crisis, either (21-22)
• four dimensions of PSI do not empirically relate linearly (22)
• low electoral volatility does not mean all the other PSI variables are high, which is important since most studies key in on electoral volatility as a lead indicator (or sole indicator) of PSI
• PSI unfairly rewards frozen, detached party systems, and punishes those that pursue a successful realignment (23)