The literature on democratisation often emphasises the role of elections. However, less attention has been given to how the electoral process affects its main protagonists – political parties. This article presents the main factors that have affected the development of political parties in two systems that could be argued to be amongst the most stable in Latin America, those of Argentina and Chile.
Much remains to be done in terms of studying parties, their organisation and their relationship to civil society and the state. But even a preliminary observation shows that the types of parties that prevail in cases where democratisation appears more consolidated (such as those of the Southern Cone) are different from the parties and groups that characterise cases where democratisation is still to be institutionalised, such as Colombia, Peru and Venezuela.
Little has been said about the extent to which the many current models for studying political parties may explain the development of those from post authoritarian Latin America, beyond the implicit assumption characterising their campaigns as ‘Americanised’ or professionalised. However, it is clear that:
- Political parties in the Southern Cone show a significant degree of professionalisation, mainly but not exclusively in their campaigning activities.
- Much of the professionalisation has been introduced as a consequence of shocks and events external to political parties which have affected campaigning directly, and the parties’ organisation and relations with the state and civil society, indirectly.
- Campaigning has combined political marketing techniques with traditional personnel-intensive techniques. Political parties show a combination of professionalisation with structural elements characteristic of the catch-all and bureaucratic models.
- Campaigning has been the key independent variable, with professionalisation having a substantial effect on parties that adopted almost archetypal electoral-professional organisations whose campaigns were fully run by professionals.
- Others, however, adopted some of the techniques but kept the campaign under political control, retaining their own mass-bureaucratic characteristics.
The Southern Cone experiences suggest that:
- A combination of professional and personnel-intensive campaign techniques coupled with ruling political parties retaining their territorially based, mass-bureaucratic characteristics, strengthens their role as anchors of democratic consolidation
- Alternatively, when purely professional techniques have been used by parties, as the ‘professionalisers’ hijack the message and territorially based contact with the masses dissipates, which weakens their role as anchors of democratic consolidation.
