Abstract
Why have moderate electorates elected and reelected leftist governments in Latin America over the last twenty years? Scholars who rely on the classic Downsian logic of the median voter theorem have observed a process of ideological moderation among the most salient left-wing parties in the region. However, there have been no systematic attempts to evaluate the moderation thesis at the comparative level, either across Latin America or within cases over time. This article uses a directional model in the spatial modeling tradition to argue that the success of the left rests on the provision of clear leftist programmatic cues to voters. Data coming from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems for five Latin American countries during 1994 and 2014 show that left-wing parties won on left-wing platforms across the region, while an in-depth study on Brazilian elections reveals that leftist voters of the Workers’ Party in 2002 were driven by programmatic cues that largely disappeared during the 2010 elections.
Highlights
Why have moderate electorates elected and reelected leftist governments in Latin America over the last twenty years? Data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) show that the average Latin American voter in five countries during twelve electoral processes is located at 5.8 on the 11-point scale representing the classic left-right continuum
Following Rabinowitz and Macdonald (1989), our use of a directional model to account for the success of the left relies on interpersonal rather than intrapersonal comparisons, which have been left as ancillary information to this article
We estimate additional regression models to capture the scope of retrospective voting, using government performance. This variable ranges from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 4, it was recoded in inverse order to facilitate the interpretation of coefficients. Since this variable does not capture whether the incumbent belongs to the left or the right, we introduced incumbency as a dummy variable coding cases as 1 for elections held under left-wing governments and 0 for all other cases
Summary
Why have moderate electorates elected and reelected leftist governments in Latin America over the last twenty years? Data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) show that the average Latin American voter in five countries during twelve electoral processes is located at 5.8 on the 11-point scale representing the classic left-right continuum. Important segments of the electorate are mobilized to vote not according to their policy preferences but rather according to different forms of particularistic exchanges and charismatic linkages (Kitschelt et al 2010) These patterns of political behavior in numerous Latin American countries have been largely driven by elites without any interest at building party organizations on the basis of stable and clearly identifiable programmatic structures (Levitsky et al 2016; Mainwaring 1999). As a rule of thumb, where particularism and charismatic leadership prevails, voters disregard programmatic cues when making their voting decisions If this is the case, spatial models lack fertile ground to account for voting behavior in Latin America. In facing a predominantly moderate median voter, left-wing parties opted to seek a strategy of providing clear ideological cues rather than diluting their preferences with moderate policy stances
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
