Authoritarian Inheritance, Political Conflict and Conservative Party Institutionalisation: The Cases of Chile and Brazil

Abstract

AbstractParty development in post-transition Latin America has often proceeded unevenly, as right-wing elites opted for non-partisan forms of political action and conservative parties remained poorly institutionalised. Recent research has demonstrated that party-building was facilitated where the political Right benefited from valuable political assets – party brand, territorial organisation, sources of funding and clientelistic networks – inherited from authoritarian regimes. This article argues that authoritarian inheritance in isolation is insufficient to foster conservative party institutionalisation. It analyses the trajectories of the major right-wing parties in Brazil and Chile, where former authoritarian incumbents benefited extensively from authoritarian inheritance and yet levels of institutionalisation differed widely across parties. The comparative analysis demonstrates that right-wing parties were most likely to consolidate where, in addition to inheriting valuable resources from the dictatorship, they experienced ideologically driven, violent conflict during their early years.