Parties and Voters facing emerging challenges

Abstract

In recent decades, democracies and electoral autocracies throughout Latin America have faced challenges across and within their party systems. The emergence of new party organizations and the decline of mainstream parties in most countries have invigorated populist and anti-establishment ideas, on one side, and public disaffection and political polarization, on the other. Even though parties should have functioned as bridges for participation and representation both inside and outside institutions, the rising of external pressures on the party systems causing a higher party fragmentation, and the ever-increasing diversified and intensified inter-party conflict, are present across the region and have allowed the proliferation of individual candidacies that might legally need to run with a party but share little ideological coherence with it. This panel brings case-study and comparative papers that evaluate the current nexus between the quality of democracy and party systems and analyze the mechanical, strategic, institutional, and psychological aspects of Latin American political parties and the organizations and candidates that compete with them.

Title	Details
The Consequences of Proscribing Political Parties in Latin America since 1990	View Paper Details
Presidentialism and party competition in Latin America	View Paper Details
Who is in the running after all? Brazilian electoral uncertainty and the timing to define the regularity of political candidacies	View Paper Details