When Parties Meet Voters

Abstract

This article provides a new comparative methodology for the study of party–voter linkages from the perspective of voters, where the critical question that distinguishes clientelistic from programmatic parties is access to publicly provided benefits. In the former case, partisan networks mediate access to goods. In the latter, beneficiaries are defined by policy and access is independent from partisan distribution networks. We show that these different access mechanisms shape voters’ distributive expectations and the nature of their linkages to political parties by developing a unique methodology to measure party networks. We test it using original survey data from Argentina and Chile and show variation both across and within countries on party–voter linkages based on differential access to benefits and parties’ organizational capacity.