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c h a p t e r s i x The Diversity of Left Party Linkages and Competitive Advantages s a m u e l h a n d l i n a n d r u t h b e r i n s c o l l i e r The role of political parties as important organizational intermediaries between state and society in democratic regimes calls for analytic attention to the nature and strength of the linkages they form with mass constituencies. This topic is central for studies of contemporary Latin American politics, especially the “left turn” in the region, because of the considerable changes that have occurred in the party/electoral arena over the past two decades. The recent electoral victories of different kinds of left parties have taken place within a context in which all parties have been adapting their linkage repertoires to best suit the new electoral environment of the neoliberal era. To understand the “left turn,” then, we must view it within this context of party linkage adaptation and reinvention. The process of linkage change and adaptation has been especially significant and acute for left parties, which traditionally relied on organizational linkages with labor unions. Indeed, the model of the mass party—its invention as a new sociopolitical “technology”—was the labor-based party (LBP), that is, the union-affiliated party. While not all LBPs in the region were leftist, nearly all major left parties were LBPs. In the contemporary period, left party linkages to popular organizations have been challenged from two directions: changes in party campaign and mobilizational strategies and changes in the nature of popular organizations themselves. First, parallel to patterns in other countries, parties in the region have de-emphasized activities targeted toward specific social constituencies through organic organizational linkages , in favor of appeals to individuals through mass media, often driven by increasingly sophisticated polling techniques. These atomized strategies differ most from those traditionally employed by LBPs, which confront the difficult process of adapting or reorienting their linkages with unions, an inconvenient support group to rely upon and court when governing in neoliberal times. The second change regards the popular organizations with which left parties might form linkages. Not only have unions been put on the defensive by the new political economy, but recent decades 140 Thematic Issues have witnessed the proliferation and increasing importance of popular associations— community-based associations and nongovernmental organizations—as vehicles for popular-sector interest representation, constituting a shift in the “popular interest regime” in the region (Collier and Handlin 2009a). These organizations often want greater autonomy from the state and instrumental rather than organic relations to political parties. Accompanying these changes of both political parties and popular organizations, then, has been a change in the nature of party-organization linkages: they have become more diversified, less organic, and more instrumental. This chapter analyzes how governing left parties in South America have adapted their linkage repertoires under these new circumstances and provides a preliminary explanation for cross-national variation among them. Four left parties or blocs are examined: the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) in Brazil, the Socialist bloc of the Partido Socialista and Partido por la Democracia (PS and PPD) in Chile, the Frente Amplio (FA) in Uruguay, and the parties forming the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) in Venezuela.¹ We focus empirical analysis of left party linkage not on left parties themselves but on cross-national survey data from the Americas Barometer, commissioned in 2006 and 2007 by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP). We examine three kinds of party-society linkages. The first is psychological linkages , operationalized as the incidence of party identification for each left party. The second concerns the party on the ground, or the direct-contact linkages that parties make with individuals: the frequency with which left parties engage citizens by attracting them to party meetings and by recruiting them to work for parties or candidates during campaigns. The third, the party in society, is organizational linkages . We examine these linkages not in terms of the older model of more organic organizational affiliation or coordination, but in terms of a looser and presumably more autonomous type of “shared-member” linkage (Seawright 2009). At issue here is whether partisans of left parties participate in societal organizations disproportionately in a manner that suggests that social organizations may act as vehicles for broadening partisan support. Our focus is on cross-national comparisons...

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