Why do party systems collapse? This important question has attracted considerable scholarly attention, especially for the case of Venezuela in the 1990s. In this book Jason Seawright emphasises corruption scandals and failures of ideological representation as the reasons for party-system collapse in both Peru and Venezuela. An innovative and resourceful researcher, Seawright makes his contentions with an impressive variety of data.
Seawright's argument about the devastating impact of corruption scandals is persuasive. Identifying relevant data from opinion polls, he shows a dramatic decline in identification with the traditional parties in Peru and Venezuela prior to collapse. He assesses various measures of corruption, and concludes that corruption scandals were more numerous than in many other Latin American countries. Seawright indicates that, to understand voters’ repudiation of traditional parties, their effect is important; repeated corruption scandals provoke anger. In turn, based on the results of an innovative psychological experiment in Lima and Cusco, he shows that anger leads to voters’ risky decisions to opt for new, outsider candidates.
Seawright also explores the effects of economic crisis and argues that it plays a ‘facilitating role’ (p. 84). In a regression analysis, he finds that indicators of economic performance under a party's administration are statistically significant to the party's share of the vote in the next election. Also, through 1989–93 World Values surveys, he shows that citizens’ dissatisfaction with their household finances raises their anxiety. However, contending that economic crisis provokes anxiety but not anger, and that anxiety leads to risk aversion and votes for alternative traditional candidates rather than votes for new outsiders, Seawright rules out ‘a direct link between economic performance and party-system collapse’ (p. 76).
Like Jana Morgan in her recent book, Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse (Penn State University Press, 2011), Seawright highlights the problem of ideological under-representation. Using data from opinion polls in Peru in 1990, Venezuela in 1998 and Argentina in 1996, he shows that in Peru a large percentage of citizens placed themselves at the centre but did not consider any traditional political party to be located there, while in Venezuela large percentages placed themselves at either the left or the right but did not identify any traditional party at these locations; by contrast, the vast majority of Argentines placed a traditional party at the same ideological location as themselves. Although variations are not measured precisely, Seawright's data are interesting. It would have been valuable also to compare ideological under-representation in Peru and Venezuela with additional Latin American countries.
Having demonstrated ideological under-representation in Peru and Venezuela, Seawright asks the necessary corollary question: why did the traditional parties fail to adapt ideologically? Why did centrist and centre-right parties in Peru and Venezuela fail to shift to the centre-left, where more voters were located? Using outstanding comparative data from an original 2004–5 survey of local party leaders in Peru, Venezuela and Argentina, Seawright argues that the traditional parties in Peru and Venezuela were more rigid than the Peronist Partido Justicialista in Argentina. Specifically, greater ideological diversity among local leaders, greater distribution of patronage and less complex outreach organisations enhanced the ideological flexibility of the Peronists.
Seawright's final chapter is an analysis of a 2002–3 survey of political attitudes in Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela. A particularly valuable finding is a dramatic increase in political efficacy in Venezuela under the Hugo Chávez government, but not elsewhere.
Seawright's arguments are stimulating, but not invariably convincing. In particular, his contention that corruption scandals have a more direct effect than economic crises is not clearly supported by his evidence. He argues that economic crisis provokes anxiety but corruption scandals provoke anger. This distinction is not tested, however, and one might suspect that fear and anger are intertwined. Further, Seawright contends that economic performance in Peru and Venezuela was not worse than in several other Latin American countries, but his data span the decades 1980–2000 rather than the periods prior to party-system collapse.
Furthermore, in my view Seawright's argument about party-system adaptation simplifies the challenges faced by the Peruvian and Venezuelan parties. The problems posed by the debt crisis were immense; ultimately the winners of both the 1990 election in Peru and the 1993 election in Venezuela adopted rightist or centre-rightist economic policies despite their campaign positions to the contrary. Also, in these critical elections in both countries, political leadership played an important role. In Peru, the key traditional-party candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, was nominated in part because of his integrity and prestige; but by the same token he would not ‘pragmatically’ preach a message that he did not believe. In Venezuela, the role of Rafael Caldera, an octogenarian, in the 1993 election is usually assessed negatively, rather than positively as in this book. Furthermore, Seawright's recommendation that parties be ‘pragmatic’, changing their ideological principles to fit voters’ opinions, appears at odds with his concern about political corruption.
Additionally, Seawright's concept of ‘party-system collapse’ is questionable. He defines this as ‘a situation in which all the parties that constitute the traditional party system simultaneously become electorally irrelevant’ (p. 48). Clearly, Venezuela is the archetypal case. Peru is more problematic; Seawright acknowledges that only one traditional party was institutionalised in Peru, but the concomitant theoretical implications are not elaborated. Furthermore, that party, the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA), was ‘electorally irrelevant’ only during the 1990–2000 government of Alberto Fujimori, which deliberately liquidated political parties. The distinction between ‘party-system collapse’ and ‘party-system instability’ is not precise.
Questions can also be raised about research design and data. The selection of Argentina as a control case is problematic because the surviving Peronist party did not govern at the onset of periods of severe economic crisis in the country. Also, the available sample surveys that relate Seawright's independent variables to voter choice are unfortunately rather patchwork, and often distant in time from the critical election.
Party-System Collapse opens important new avenues of research. The psychological experiment is particularly innovative, and the original survey of local party leaders in three countries will be helpful to social scientists for decades. The analyses of the implications of corruption scandals and of ideological under-representation are important contributions to the study of Latin American politics. However, party-system collapse is extremely complex, and Seawright is unlikely to have the last word on the topic.
