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An ‘Organised Disorganisation’: Informal Organisation and the Persistence of Local Party Structures in Argentine Peronism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2001

STEVEN LEVITSKY
Affiliation:
Harvard University.
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Abstract

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This article attempts to fill the void in research on the Justicialista Party (PJ) organisation. Challenging accounts of the contemporary PJ as a weak, personalistic organisation, it argues that the party maintains a powerful base-level infrastructure with deep roots in working- and lower-class society. This organisation has been understated by scholars because, unlike prototypical working class party structures, it is informal and highly decentralised. The PJ organisation consists of a range of informal networks – based on unions, clubs, NGOs and activists' homes that are largely unconnected to the party bureaucracy. These organisations provided the government of Carlos Menem with a range of benefits in the 1990s, particularly in the realm of local problem-solving and patronage distribution. Yet they also constrained the Menem leadership, limiting its capacity to impose candidates and strategies on lower-level party branches.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

Footnotes

Research for this article was made possible by grants from Fulbright-Hays and the Social Science Research Council. I am grateful to Javier Auyero, Frances Hagopian, David Samuels and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.