Television News and Political Partisanship in Latin America

Abstract

This article explores the linkages between television news and the decline of partisanship in Latin America, using survey data for eight countries. After discussing the erosion of traditional Latin American parties during the 1990s, I show that the literature has assumed different types of causal links between television and party dealignment (treatment vs. strategic effects, and cohort vs. short-term effects). Based on comparative research on industrial and new democracies, I present two contrasting hypotheses (television news inhibits partisanship; exposure to television creates political awareness) and test the impact of short-term treatment effects using a multinomial logit model. The results suggest that television news encourages party identification in the short run (through treatment effects), although the development of television may weaken Latin American parties in the long run (through strategic effects).