² Joseph Schlesinger, ‘Political Party Organizations’, in James March (ed.), Handbook of Organizations, Chicago, Rand McNally, 1965, pp. 769–72; Scott, James, ‘Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change’, American Political Science Review, 63: 4 (1969), pp. 1142–58;CrossRefGoogle Scholar James Q. Wilson, Political Organizations, New York, Basic Books, 1973, pp. 95–118; Wolfgang Müller, ‘Party Patronage and Party Colonization of the State’, in Richard Katz and William Crotty (eds), Handbook of Party Politics, London, Sage, 2006, pp. 189–95.

³ See, for example, Yuko Kasuya on the case of the Philippines: ‘Patronage of the Past and Future: Legislators' Decision to Impeach President Estrada of the Philippines’, Pacific Review, 18: 4 (2005), pp. 521–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Of course, the deadlock produced by the conflict between presidents and assemblies is usually considered a danger to the stability of the presidential system. See Arturo Valenzuela confirms Linz's hypothesis in a more recent analysis focused on Latin America in ‘Latin American Presidencies Interrupted’, Journal of Democracy, 15: 4 (2004), pp. 5–19.

⁴ Warner, Carolyn, ‘Political Parties and the Opportunity Costs of Patronage’, Party Politics, 3: 4 (1997), pp. 533–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Susan Stokes discusses this subject in reference to the implementation of neoliberal policies in Latin America during the 1990s, in Mandates and Democracy. Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001.Google Scholar

⁶ Michael McDonald and Ian Budge, Elections, Parties, Democracy. Conferring the Median Mandate, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 4.Google Scholar

⁷ Mainwaring and Scully mention stability in the pattern of party competition as the first requirement for the institutionalization of a party system. The other three features of an institutionalized party system are that: parties have strong roots in society, i.e. most voters feel connected to a party and people easily identify what the different parties stand for; parties are accorded legitimacy, which suggests that citizens trust in parties as institutions; and party organizations are solid, possessing a status and value of their own, which implies that they are not just vehicles for political entrepreneurs. Scott Mainwaring and Timothy Scully, ‘Introduction’, in S. Mainwaring and T. Scully (eds), Building Democratic Institutions. Party Systems in Latin America, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1995, pp. 2–34.Google Scholar

⁸ Norden, Deborah, ‘Party Relations and Democracy in Latin America’, Party Politics, 4: 4 (1998), pp. 423–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is no wonder that Chile and Uruguay, whose party systems do meet this prerequisite, are the South American countries where democracy has functioned best during the past years. See Scott Mainwaring, Reference document for the First Annual Reunion of the IAFPP, Miami, December 2001.

⁹ Accordingly, as Katz suggests, it appears that an internal pressure that forces party leaders to keep consistent in their political positions could foster higher levels of accountability in the political system. Katz, Richard, ‘The Problem of Candidate Selection and Models of Party Democracy’, Party Politics, 7: 3 (2001), pp. 277–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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¹¹ On the conceptual distinction between patronage and clientelism see Simona Piattoni, ‘Clientelism in Historical and Comparative Perspective’, in Simona Piattoni (ed.), Clientelism, Interests, and Democratic Representation, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 4–8. Also Van Biezen, Ingrid and Kopecký, Petr, ‘The State and the Parties: Public Funding, Public Regulation, and Rent Seeking in Contemporary Democracies’, Party Politics, 13: 2 (2007), pp. 235–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹² On the different uses of patronage see Frank Sorauf, ‘The Silent Revolution in Patronage’, in Edward Banfield (ed.), Urban Government, New York, Free Press, 1969, pp. 376–87; Scott Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems in the Third Wave of Democratization, Stanford, Stanford University Press, pp. 180–207. The increasing importance of patronage as control of policy-making in established democracies is noted by Petr Kopecký and Peter Mair, ‘Political Parties and Patronage in Contemporary Democracies: An Introduction’, paper prepared for the ECPR Joint Sessions, Nicosia, 25–30 April 2006.Google Scholar

¹³ Even when both sides perceive the exchange as mutually beneficial, the clientelist linkage entails a strong element of inequality, which is preserved and reproduced by the nature of the exchange. See Mainwaring, Rethinking Party Systems, pp. 177–80; John Martz, The Politics of Cllientelism, New Brunswick, Transaction, 1997, pp. 8–12. For a different perspective about ‘inequality’ as a defining feature of clientelism see Piattoni, ‘Clientelism in Historical and Comparative Perspective’.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Javier Auyero, Poor People's Politics, Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2000.Google Scholar

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³³ Levitsky, Steven and Murillo, María V., ‘Argentina Weathers the Storm’, Journal of Democracy, 14: 4 (2003), pp. 152–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar De la Rúa resigned on 20 December. In the absence of the vice-president, Congress appointed PJ Governor Rodríguez Saá as president, but he resigned ten days later, amidst popular protests. For a detailed political account of the 2001–2 crisis and its aftermath, see also Steven Levitsky, ‘Argentina: Democratic Survival amidst Economic Failure’, in Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring (eds), The Third Wave Democratization in Latin America. Advances and Setbacks, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2005, pp. 63–89.

³⁴ Enrique Peruzzotti, ‘Demanding Accountable Government: Citizens, Politicians, and the Perils of Representative Democracy in Argentina’, in Levitsky and Murillo, Argentine Democracy, pp. 229–49.Google Scholar

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³⁶ Kirchner's approval ratings hovered around 70 per cent during his four-year term. He eventually declined to run for re-election in October 2007 to promote his wife's candidacy. Unsurprisingly, she won an easy victory with 45 per cent of the vote against 23 per cent for the runner-up.Google Scholar

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³⁹ In this regard, Brazil – until very recently the epitome of weakly institutionalized party system – exposes a sharply contrasting case. The Workers' Party's progressive shift from the left to the centre left was supported and accompanied by the majority of a mobilized rank and file in the context of a formally institutionalized politicalorganization. As Samuels suggests, this proves that institutionalized parties too are able to adapt and, moreover, that these kinds of shifts do not hurt the institutionalization of the party system. On the contrary, the emergence of a highly institutionalized and still flexible and electorally successful party enhanced the institutionalization of the party system as a whole, imposing a political cost on previously accepted behaviours, especially party switches. See Samuels, David, ‘From Socialism to Social Democracy: Party Organization and the Transformation of the Workers' Party in Brazil’, Comparative Political Studies, 37: 9 (2004), pp. 999–1024.CrossRefGoogle Scholar