Una visita a la lealtad hacia los partidos políticos en América Latina

Abstract

This paper explores the impact of enduring psychologicalattitudes, such as party identi?caton on the political ystems and thevotng behavior of four Latin American countries: Argentina, Chile,Mexico and Venezuela. Using available data this paper examines threeissues. Firstly, it compares partisanship stability in these four coun-tries. Secondly, it analyses the way party identi?caton mirrors pastpolitical struggles in terms of social and ideological cleavages. Thirdly,this work assesses the political impact of party identi?caton in terms of both voting behavior and the way in which the mind processespolitical information.Someofthemajor?ndingsofthisanalysisarethefollowing.Whereas party loyalties seem to be stable in Chile and Argentina,Mexican and Venezuelan citizens appear to be immersed in a processof partisan dealignment-realignment. With the exception of Chile,where ideological struggle have been intensa in the past, party iden-ti?ers in the other three countries re?ect the lack of ideologicalpolarization and the inclusive nature of their largest parties. lngeneral, most vote for their respective candidate which accounts forabout half of the vote for these candidatas. Partisan identi?catonclearly biases how voters process political information. This is ashelf-reinforcing mechanism that party explains the endurance ofpartisanship.