Success and Failure of New Parties in South America. The Cases of the Brazilian PT and the Venezuelan Causa R

Our study addresses the question of why some new parties in Latin America consolidated organizationally and established themselves durably in the party system, while others, albeit starting from similar conditions, failed and disintegrated. What are the factors that determine a new party’s success and its prospects for institutionalization in this specific regional context? Most accounts of new party entry regard the rise and establishment of new parties to be a result of electoral demands and institutional barriers. On the demand side, electoral market failure and representational deficits are supposed to create a market gap, which can be exploited by political entrepreneurs. On the supply side, electoral barriers act as a counterweight to market mechanisms of party system adaptation by reducing the possibilities of new party entry. From these accounts, we should conclude that new parties emerge and institutionalize where electoral demand is high and institutional barriers are low. This supposition, however, runs counter to observations from Latin America where many new parties failed despite favorable electoral conditions and low institutional hurdles. Obviously, party institutionalization, which may be considered as largely equivalent with success, is more demanding a process than new party entry, especially in the Latin American context. To explain, why some new Latin American parties succeeded and others failed, we look not only at electoral performance as a measure of success, but we take also the internal, organizational dimension of party institutionalization into account. Organization matters to mobilize voters, to meet financing needs, and to recruit personnel for public office. Most importantly, it helps to create group loyalty that is essential for a new party to overcome internal conflicts and electoral setbacks. We argue that organization building is not only a question of strategic choice, but it depends to a large degree on structural conditions, especially in the early stages of party development. Additionally, we look at the timing and sequencing of party development. Assuming that organization building is hampered by early electoral success, we regard the sequence of organizational and electoral consolidation, that is, the sequence of internal and external institutionalization, an important factor for a new party’s success. To substantiate our suppositions, we analyze and compare two prototypical cases of new party entry in Latin America, the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores and the Venezuelan Causa R. Both parties show some striking similarities. Both emerged at the end of the 1970s from societal groups, especially from dissident unions, and both benefitted from representational gaps in their respective countries to rise electorally. However, only the PT managed to establish itself durably and to change the Brazilian political landscape. By contrast, the Causa R’s electoral rise at the start of the 1990s was short-lived and followed by the party’s split and disintegration. By the hand of these two cases we show that structural conditions at the time of party foundation and the timing of electoral rise are crucial factors to explain these divergent developments.