Electoral Competition and Electoral Competitiveness in Mexico, 1977-1997

Abstract

Political parties and party systems exhibit widely varying degrees of nationalization, thatis the extent to which a party receives similar levels of electoral support throughout thecountry. The level of party nationalization has a prominent effect on such important factorsas the survival of democracy, the types of issues that dominate political competition,legislative behavior, and public policy. In spite of its importance, party nationalization hasbeen neglected in the comparative politics literature. The paper makes three contributions.First, it provides a measure of party and party system nationalization, based on theGini coefficient, that is superior for comparative analysis to those employed to date. Second,it utilizes these measures to analyze nationalization in 17 democracies in the Americas,the first time nationalization has been examined empirically outside of the advancedindustrial democracies. The measure underscores the widely varying degrees innationalization across party systems, within party systems over time, across parties withincountries, and within parties over time. The third contribution is the following finding:party system nationalization varies widely from case to case, which has major potentialconsequences in the way democratic systems work.