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Historical Polarization and Representation in South American Party Systems, 1900–1990

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 December 2016

Simon Bornschier
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Abstract

Although ideological polarization can create problems for governability and democratic stability, this article argues that it also has beneficial effects in new democracies. By clarifying the political alternatives, polarization creates strong links between parties and voters, and thereby instills accountability mechanisms that force parties to remain responsive to evolving voter preferences. A comparative historical analysis of six South American cases demonstrates that the vast differences in the quality of representation in the 1980s, immediately after many countries in the region returned to democracy, were rooted in an early bifurcation of party systems in the first half of the twentieth century: while prolonged periods of ideological conflict occurred in some countries during this period, polarization was aborted by various means in others. By showing that ideological moderation may help formal democracies survive, but that aborting conflict in the long run severely hampers key aspects of the quality of democracy, this study suggests a revision of conventional views regarding ideological polarization.

Keywords

party systemsrepresentationpolitical polarizationLatin America
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 49 , Issue 1 , January 2019 , pp. 153 - 179
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2016 

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Footnotes

*

Institute for Political Science, University of Zurich (email: [email protected]). I would like to thank Marco Steenbergen, Marcus Kreuzer, Silja Häusermann, Hanspeter Kriesi, Philip Manow, Scott Desposato, and Wolfgang Muno for reading and commenting extensively on prior versions. Miguel de Luca, Andrés Malamud, Zsolt Enyedi, Jonathan van Eerd, Hanna Schwander, Hans-Dieter Klingemann, Daniele Caramani, Hermann Schmitt, as well as the panel participants at the ECPR General Conference in Reykjavik (2011) and the XXX LASA Congress in San Francisco (2012) also provided valuable feedback. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the responsible editor, Robert Johns, for their insightful comments. All remaining errors and shortcomings are mine. Funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation (grants 100017_126670 and 100017_149531) is gratefully acknowledged. An online appendix with supplementary material is available at http://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1017/S0007123416000387.

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