Introduction
The vast majority of new political parties die.Footnote 1 Nevertheless, existing scholarship largely ignores unsuccessful cases of party-building and focuses on the small number of success stories.Footnote 2 This selection on the dependent variable is problematic: without understanding why some new parties fail, we cannot fully understand why others succeed.
Schisms – defined as the defection of a major leader or faction – are a common cause of new party failure.Footnote 3 New parties typically lack strong brands, which in established parties raise the electoral cost of exit, thus discouraging elite defection. They also tend to lack institutionalised procedures for conflict adjudication. Consequently, low cohesion is the Achilles’ heel of many new parties: parties oft–en split shortly after creation, and when they do, they usually fail. Recently in Latin America, numerous prominent new parties have fatally split: Venezuela's La Causa Radical (Radical Cause, LCR), which attained prominence in the early 1990s; Guatemala's Partido de Avanzada Nacional (National Advancement Party, PAN), which won the presidency in 1995; Colombia's Partido Verde Colombiano (Colombian Green Party, PVC), which finished second in the 2010 presidential election; Argentina's third most successful party in the 1980s, Unión del Centro Democrático (Union of the Democratic Centre, UCEDE); and Peru's leading Left coalition in the 1980s, Izquierda Unida (United Left, IU).
But schisms are far from inevitable in heterogeneous new parties. Many new parties avoid or survive schisms, often despite deep divisions. Take, again, recently emerged Latin American parties. More than a dozen survived intact and took root, including several highly factionalised ones: Brazil's Partido dos Trabalhadores (Workers’ Party, PT), El Salvador's Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN) and Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance, ARENA), Chile's Unión Democrática Independiente (Independent Democratic Union, UDI), Mexico's Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Party of the Democratic Revolution, PRD), and Nicaragua's Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN).Footnote 4
What explains this variation? Recent research has shed important light on the determinants of new party schisms. Although scholars have long held that parties rely on patronage to prevent defection,Footnote 5 recent scholarship argues that patronage does not generate robust cohesion, as patronage seekers may ‘jump ship’ amid electoral crisis.Footnote 6 Patronage-based cohesion is especially fragile in new parties, which typically have weak brands and are thus susceptible to electoral crisis.Footnote 7 Recent analyses thus emphasise the importance of getting ‘beyond patronage’,Footnote 8 arguing that new parties are less vulnerable to schism if they have alternative, or ‘non-material’,Footnote 9 sources of cohesion such as a shared ideologyFootnote 10 or esprit de corps generated by conflict.Footnote 11
This article contributes to the emerging scholarship on new party cohesion by highlighting an understudied, undertheorised variable: the role of the party leader. Scholars of party-building tend to shy away from leadership-centred explanations for fear of excessive voluntarism and therefore fail to conceptualise differences between leaders systematically. Those who do focus on the role of leaders tend to view dominant or charismatic political leaders as impediments to successful party-building.Footnote 12 This article challenges both trends, arguing that externally appealing, internally dominant leaders generate cohesion in new parties.
How does this argument work? A striking proportion of electorally successful new parties owe their success to an externally appealing leader.Footnote 13 But external appeal, by itself, does not make a leader dominant within his party. Internal dominance requires additional sources of internal power, namely moral authority, cross-factional ties, and ideological representativeness. Thus, whereas some externally appealing leaders are internally dominant, others are not. This variation can make the difference between schism and survival. Externally appealing, internally dominant leaders do not merely provide coat-tails, which discourage elite defection; they facilitate collective decision-making and conflict resolution, and, because of their pre-eminence, they seldom have incentives to defect. Leaders who are not internally dominant, no matter how externally appealing, are less capable of facilitating collective decision-making and conflict resolution, and because of the limitations on their internal power, they are more liable to defect, or to come to an impasse with a vital rival faction. The consequences of such defections for fledgling parties can be harmful, even fatal.
The article demonstrates this argument's causal mechanisms at work in the ‘typical’, or ‘representative’, case of Peru's IU.Footnote 14 The collapse of IU was a consequential political event in Peru, and the article's empirical contribution is to shed new light on this previously studied event through an application of the above theoretical argument. The case study illustrates how a new party with numerous assets and advantages, IU, can fatally splinter due to the presence of an electorally indispensable leader who is not internally dominant (i.e., Alfonso Barrantes). It argues, more specifically, that Alfonso Barrantes's weak cross-factional ties, lack of moral authority and low ideological representativeness limited his power within IU, especially during the second half of the 1980s; that his lack of internal dominance led to his defection; and that, because he was electorally indispensable, his defection resulted in IU's collapse. The case study draws on interviews with IU members and scholars,Footnote 15 archival materials,Footnote 16 and underutilised secondary literature in Spanish.Footnote 17 These information sources (1) provide otherwise hard-to-obtain case details, both factualFootnote 18 and perspectival;Footnote 19 (2) furnish evidence of the theory's causal mechanisms at work;Footnote 20 and (3) support the article's comparative argument concerning IU and Brazil's PT.Footnote 21
The article presents additional evidence for its theoretical argument through a brief analysis of two shadow cases, Brazil's PT and Mexico's PRD. It treats the early PT and PRD as the ‘most similar’ cases to IU and argues that, despite analytically relevant similarities to IU, both parties had electorally indispensable leaders who were internally dominant (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, respectively), helping them to avoid schism.
The article does not purport to prove or even test its argument. Rather, the article is an exercise in theory-building: it presents a theoretical argument and provides initial evidence of plausibility and generalisability in the form of a representative case study and a brief most-similar-cases comparison. The primary contribution of the article, thus, is the proposition of a new, empirically grounded theory.
Finally, although the evidence in this article relates to IU (and secondarily to the PT and the PRD), the argument should apply to all new parties, regardless of where they fall on the Left/Right spectrum.
The article is organised in three sections. The first section elaborates the theory. The second operationalises the dependent and independent variables. The third presents the IU case study, addresses alternative explanations, and compares IU to the PT and PRD. A brief conclusion follows.
The Argument
Party-building is the process by which new parties develop into electorally significant and enduring political actors. To be considered a case of successful party-building, a new party must both persist over time and consistently win a large proportion of the national vote. Unsuccessful new parties include those that do not take off electorally, those that collapse after experiencing brief electoral success, and those that persist over time but receive only a tiny share of the vote.Footnote 22
When new parties collapse after experiencing brief electoral success, schisms are often the cause.Footnote 23 Internal conflict is a normal feature of party life, as parties must take collective decisions on numerous issues (e.g., candidate selection, platforms, alliances) and, more fundamentally, agree on decision-making procedures. Because groups may conflict in these areas, schisms are a risk for parties.
New parties are especially prone to schisms. Why? First, most parties, in their early years, are in the process of developing their partisan brands, which requires them to differentiate themselves from other parties and demonstrate consistency over time.Footnote 24 New partisan brands thus tend to be works-in-progress – and hence too weak and fragile to discourage elite defection. Second, new parties tend to lack institutionalised rules and procedures for collective decision-making and conflict settlement.
Largely due to the weakness of new partisan brands, only a tiny fraction of new parties take off electorally in the first place.Footnote 25 A striking proportion of this tiny subset owe their electoral success to a popular leader's coat-tails.Footnote 26 Particularly in presidential systems, leaders’ external appeal can be a crucial source of mass support for incipient parties.Footnote 27 In Latin America, which is uniformly presidentialist, founding leaders have laid the foundation for several lasting partisan brands (e.g., Peronism in Argentina, Fujimorismo in Peru, Chavismo in Venezuela), and in more institutionalised parties like the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, APRA) and Acción Popular (Popular Action, AP) in Peru; the Partido de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Party, PLN) in Costa Rica; Acción Democrática (Democratic Action, AD) and Comité de Organización Política Electoral e Independiente (Independent Electoral Political Organization Committee, COPEI) in Venezuela; the Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (Dominican Revolutionary Party, PRD) and Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (Dominican Liberation Party, PLD) in the Dominican Republic; and, more recently, El Salvador's ARENA, Brazil's PT and Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazilian Social Democracy Party, PSDB), and Mexico's PRD, founding leaders have played a vital role in mobilising early support.
In effect, popular leaders substitute for strong brands. Their coat-tails, like strong brands, guarantee electoral relevance and therefore discourage defection. But popular leaders do not ensure cohesion. Indeed, new parties that electorally depend on a leader are vulnerable to fatal schisms because, if the leader defects, they collapse. In recent decades, several new Latin American parties have collapsed because a popular leader defected. Peru's IU crumbled after Alfonso Barrantes's 1989 exit. Guatemala's PAN virtually disappeared after Álvaro Arzú and presidential candidate Óscar Berger left the party in the early 2000s. Colombia's PVC did not survive the departure of its presidential candidate and best-known figure, Antanas Mockus. In other cases, popular leaders, despite providing coat-tails, become embroiled in irresolvable conflicts with vital rival factions, and the resulting impasse leads to a fatal split. Venezuela’s LCR, for example, collapsed after popular leader Andrés Velásquez expelled the party's core radical bloc due to ideological differences and rivalry with radical leader Pablo Medina.Footnote 28
This article's central argument is that if leaders combine external appeal with internal dominance, the risk of such schisms decreases substantially. Why should this be so? And where does internal dominance come from?
The Sources of Internal Dominance
Internal dominance is defined as uncontested, pre-eminent power within one's party. When a leader dominates, he stands ‘head and shoulders’ above the rest of the party elite. No elite can seriously challenge him for the presidential nomination, vie with him for control of the party, or advocate his expulsion without being marginalised.Footnote 29
Internal power comes from multiple sources. One, undoubtedly, is external appeal. If party members depend on a leader's coat-tails, they have material incentives to accommodate and support him, and not to defect. Nevertheless, external appeal, by itself, does not make a leader internally dominant. Why? There are two broad reasons. First, in some parties, important factions are not driven primarily, or even at all, by electoral incentives (e.g., Mexico's early PRD;Footnote 30 Peru's IU). Insofar as members are ideologues, not pragmatic office seekers, popular leaders do not gain internal leverage from their external appeal. Second, there are multiple sources of internal power; external appeal is just one, and internal dominance requires additional sources.
One additional source is cross-factional ties. In factionalised parties, a leader with constructive relationships across factions may be ‘indispensable’ for brokerage and mediation.Footnote 31 Leaders who are disengaged, or who refuse to negotiate with major factions, cannot serve as cross-factional mediators and brokers. Because it takes time to develop cross-factional ties, a leader with strong pre-existing cross-factional ties may be critical in the case of incipient parties. Here, one encounters variation. Some leaders have strong pre-existing cross-factional ties because they led their parties’ founding struggles and, in the process, collaborated with most party feeder organisations (e.g., Lula of Brazil's PT). Others have weak pre-existing cross-factional ties. Indeed, individuals may be made leaders precisely because they are relative outsiders and thus do not empower any faction at the expense of others (e.g., Barrantes of Peru's IU).
Moral authority is a second internal power source. Moral authority means a leader's credibility and respect among party members, usually due to his pre-party background. Here, too, we encounter variation. Certain leaders command respect or reverence among their base. Some even have a mystical quality, or are considered fundamental to the party's identity or the incarnation of its animating cause. Such stature may result from revolutionary ancestry (e.g., Cárdenas of Mexico's PRD); class status (e.g., Lula of Brazil's PT); heroism (e.g., Charles de Gaulle of the French Republicans); public hardship (e.g., Nelson Mandela of South Africa's African National Congress [ANC]); leadership in founding struggles (e.g., Lula; Robert Mugabe of the Zimbabwe African National Union [ZANU]); and more. Moral authority can also be rooted in personal charisma.Footnote 32 By contrast, some figures are made leaders despite lacking moral authority. This might happen when, as described above, a new party chooses an outsider as leader (e.g., Barrantes of Peru's IU).
A third source of internal power is ideological/programmatic representativeness of the active base. Although rank-and-file attitudes are usually heterogeneous, and although leaders tend to have significant autonomy from the membership,Footnote 33 ideological agreement between leader and base matters. Naturally, leaders tend to have more internal support, and thus more internal power, to the extent that their stances align with those of active members. Insofar as their stances deviate from prevailing base-level ones, they are more vulnerable to internal challenges.
In sum, internal power does not merely come from external appeal. It also comes from cross-factional ties, moral authority and ideological representativeness. Each of these sources is potentially independent of the rest,Footnote 34 although some often reinforce others.Footnote 35 Regardless, they contribute to a leader's internal power independently and will be treated as roughly equal in weight (see Figure 1). The more of these sources, and the more of each source, that a leader possesses, the more internally powerful he will be. Consequently, new party leaders, even externally appealing ones, vary in internal power. Simply put, some are internally dominant, while others are not (see section ‘Operationalisation’ below).
Figure 1. Sources of Internal Dominance
This argument is primarily structuralist, not voluntarist. To be sure, a leader's internal dominance is not wholly static; external events, as well as a leader's own contingent decisions, can lead to short-term changes in his cross-factional ties, moral authority and ideological representativeness. Nevertheless, a leader's prior endowments (e.g., pre-existing cross-factional ties, political background) largely determine the parameters and likelihood of such changes. It is much easier to maintain pre-existing cross-factional ties, for example, than to establish them from scratch after a party is founded. Similarly, it is much easier to establish moral authority if one has a symbolically resonant pedigree, or a background as a hero or leader of a political or social movement. Seldom is internal dominance a pure product of individual effort, prudence or savvy. Internal dominance tends to be based, in large measure, on objective endowments: electoral clout, pre-existing cross-factional links, ancestry, and backgrounds of leadership, heroism, or hardship. Cárdenas of Mexico's PRD, for example, was not a once-in-a-generation leader like Lula da Silva in Brazil's early PT, but he still dominated internal PRD affairs due to his endowments (see case study section ‘The Argument at Work’ below for details).
How Externally Appealing, Internally Dominant Leaders Prevent Schisms
How do externally appealing, internally dominant leaders prevent new party schisms? As noted earlier, most new parties, especially heterogeneous, mass-based ones, lack strong internal institutions. Often, a new party's feeder groups lack horizontal linkages. Consequently, new parties often cannot, through institutional channels, aggregate preferences and collectively take decisions and settle conflicts. Some parties eventually develop strong institutions,Footnote 36 but new parties must do so from scratch and avoid alienating key players in the process. Institution building, thus, is delicate and slow. Many new parties lack formal decision-making procedures in important areas (e.g., Venezuela's LCR;Footnote 37 Mexico's early PRD).Footnote 38 Others establish unanimity or near unanimity requirements for collective decision-making (e.g., Peru's IU). Under these circumstances, schism becomes a risk, as conflicts may persist without resolution, and reforms may be obstructed.
Externally appealing, internally dominant leaders can solve these problems. First, they can found dominant factions, which control party machinery and simplify collective decision-making (e.g., Lula; Cárdenas).Footnote 39 Second, they can influence internal debates (e.g., on platforms, alliances), often in their own favour. Morally authoritative leaders, for example, can convince members to moderate or compromise for the party's electoral gain (e.g., Lula).Footnote 40 Internally dominant leaders can leverage party candidacies and posts in internal debates (e.g., Cárdenas). The inability to influence debates in these ways may motivate a leader to defect (e.g., Barrantes). Third, internally dominant leaders can informally function as preference aggregators, decision-makers and arbiters. In parties with limited internal democracy and weak horizontal ties between factions, a leader with cross-factional links can collect viewpoints and factor them into party decision-making (e.g., Cárdenas). Importantly, internally dominant leaders enjoy considerable leeway to take decisions in the name of their parties (e.g., Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre in Peru's APRA; Juan Perón of Argentina's Partido Justicialista [Justicialist Party or Peronist Party, PJ]; Roberto D'Aubuisson in El Salvador's ARENA; Jaime Guzmán in Chile's UDI; Cárdenas; Lula). In many cases, their word is effectively law, meaning that they can arbitrate conflict and impose party lines, even controversial ones, unilaterally (e.g., Cárdenas). Morally authoritative leaders are less likely to be viewed as fakes, traitors or sell-outs if they moderate over time or sacrifice party principles for practical gain (e.g., Lula in the early 2000s).Footnote 41 Leaders denied such leeway are more liable to defect (e.g., Barrantes). In short, just as popular leaders substitute for strong brands, internally dominant leaders can substitute for institutions of decision-making and conflict resolution.
Moreover, externally appealing, internally dominant leaders can win presidential nominations with limited internal resistance (e.g., Lula; Cárdenas). This is critical for cohesion, as presidential nominations are winner-take-all choices with singular stakes. Internally non-dominant leaders, even highly popular ones, may face serious competition for presidential nominations. In such cases, schism might result, as whoever is not nominated, or fears not being nominated, could defect (e.g., Barrantes).
Externally appealing, internally dominant leaders are neither necessary nor sufficient for new party cohesion. Parties can hang together initially without such leaders (e.g., Mexico's Partido Revolucionario Institucional [Institutional Revolutionary Party, PRI]; El Salvador's FMLN). Conversely, new parties may splinter and collapse despite the presence of such leaders (e.g., Argentina's Frente País Solidario [Front for a Country in Solidarity, FREPASO]).Footnote 42 The argument here is probabilistic: externally appealing, internally dominant leaders decrease the likelihood of schisms in new parties.
Operationalisation
This brief section operationalises the dependent (DV) and independent (IV) variables, then previews the third section and comparative conclusion by scoring IU and two most similar cases, Brazil's PT and Mexico's PRD.
New party schism (DV): New party schisms occur if a party, after winning 10 per cent of the vote in one to four consecutive congressional elections, permanently falls below 10 per cent due to a leader or faction's defection.Footnote 43
External appeal (IV): During a party's first decade, what ratio of major factional leaders considered the leader the party's most electable member? If most or all factional leaders did, the leader's external appeal is high; if a large minority did, his external appeal is medium; otherwise, his external appeal is low.
Cross-factional ties (IV): During a party's first decade, what ratio of major factional leaders did the leader consistently meet with, and what ratio of major factions did he consistently support including in the party? If the answer is a large majority or all of the major factions, his cross-factional ties are strong; if the answer is a large minority or small majority, his cross-factional ties are medium; otherwise, his cross-factional ties are weak.
Ideological representativeness (IV): During a party's first decade, what ratio of active members generally supported the leader in ideological/programmatic debates? If most did, the leader's ideological representativeness is high; if a large minority did, his representativeness is medium; if a small minority did, his representativeness is low.
Moral authority (IV): If the leader entered the party with an extraordinary source of mystique, credibility or respect such as revolutionary pedigree or a background of heroism, public hardship or leadership in founding struggles, his moral authority is high; if he played a consistent but lower-profile role as a cadre or leader in party-related movements in the years or decades before the party's creation, his moral authority is medium; otherwise, his moral authority is low.
Internal dominance (composite IV): A leader's internal dominance is scored by adding his scores on external appeal, cross-factional ties, ideological representativeness and moral authority. Two ‘high’ and two ‘medium’ scores are required for internal dominance; lower sums indicate lack of internal dominance.
IU is thus a case of new party schism, having met the 10 per cent threshold only twice (1985, 1990) and collapsing due to Alfonso Barrantes's defection. The conclusion's most similar cases, the PT and PRD, did not split, surviving early development intact and taking root. They have stayed above 10 per cent in seven (1990–2014) and eight (1994–2015) consecutive congressional elections, respectively.
Tables 1 and 2 provide scores for IU (highlighted) as well as for the PT and PRD. The case study and conclusion, to which we now turn, provide supporting information for these scores. Figure 2 illustrates, visually, that whereas IU's popular leader, Barrantes, lacked internal dominance, the popular leaders of the PT and PRD, Lula and Cárdenas, were internally dominant.
Figure 2. External Appeal, Internal Dominance (Barrantes, Lula, Cárdenas)
Table 1. Internal Dominance of Party Leader (IU, PT, PRD)
Table 2. External Appeal, Internal Dominance, New Party Schism (IU, PT, PRD)
The Argument at Work: The Schism of Peru's IU
IU was a socialist electoral coalition founded in September 1980, shortly after the May 1980 general election that marked Peru's full transition from military rule to democracy. In both the May 1980 general election and the 1978 constituent assembly election, the Peruvian Left ran divided, with numerous parties and coalitions competing on separate tickets. Although the Left fared well in 1978, riding a wave of social mobilisation and benefiting from the absence of rival party AP on the ballot,Footnote 44 its relatively poor showing in the 1980 general election demonstrated that, under normal electoral conditions, Left success would require Left unity. Thus was born IU, which comprised most of Peru's major Left forces and which was established in advance of the November 1980 municipal elections.
During the 1980s, IU established itself as one of Peru's three leading electoral forces, alongside APRA and AP. But in late 1989, IU fatally split. Less than a year before the 1990 presidential election, and less than two months before nationwide municipal elections, Alfonso Barrantes, IU's ex-president and perennial lead candidate, decided after months of political jockeying and tortuous negotiations to defect from IU with a small group of allies and contest the 1989 municipal and 1990 general elections independently. Barrantes's defection resulted in IU's collapse. In the 1990 presidential election, IU and Barrantes split the Left vote. Both performed abysmally, and neither recovered. In the early 1990s, Barrantes retired from politics, and IU disbanded.
IU's collapse was a consequential event, given the coalition's potential prior to the collapse and the likely effects of its disintegration. In the four national elections that IU contested with Barrantes as its lead candidate – nationwide municipal elections in 1980, 1983 and 1986, and the 1985 general election – it averaged nearly 30 per cent of the national vote. At the time of its schism, IU had an opportunity to capitalise on the electoral weakness of its two main competitors, APRA and AP. Pre-election polls conducted prior to Barrantes's defection, throughout 1988 and 1989, indicated that Barrantes and right-wing candidate Mario Vargas Llosa would be the two top finishers in the 1990 presidential election (thus entering a run-off), and that Alberto Fujimori would not reach the second round.Footnote 45 IU's schism, thus, may have made possible Fujimori's pivotal 1990 presidential victory. It also weakened potential opposition to the authoritarian, neoliberal and populist Fujimori government (or to a hypothetical Vargas Llosa government).
What explains IU's collapse?
Alfonso Barrantes's external appeal
Alfonso Barrantes was electorally indispensable to IU. Despite varying in their ideologies and international alignments, the parties of IU were overwhelmingly Marxist-Leninist. Roughly half of its leaders were openly revolutionary. Most had been engaged in semi-clandestine struggle under the military dictatorship that immediately preceded Peru's democratisation and IU's formation. Thus, outside their organised constituencies,Footnote 46 IU parties had little organisational reach, and their leaders had scant appeal.
Among Left politicians in the 1980s, Alfonso Barrantes was singularly popular with lower-income voters, a massive, floating and decisive segment of the national electorate. Although lower-income Peruvians tended to support redistribution during this period, they did not support any party and certainly did not support the partisan Left. But many supported Barrantes, who humanised and softened the Left's radical, militant image. In contrast to most of his Left contemporaries in Peru, Barrantes was seen not only as professional and competent, but also as non-militant and personable. He was articulate, educated and well-informed on a wide range of political and economic issues. He was friendly, good-humoured and non-combative in speeches and interviews. He avoided rhetoric that alienated ordinary voters. He had provincial roots, hailing from the Cajamarca region, and conveyed a rural simplicity. He displayed particular fondness for children, regularly invoking them in his speeches and coming to be known, affectionately, as Tío Frejolito (Uncle Bean) by the Peruvian public. Barrantes's signature policy as Lima mayor (1983–6) guaranteed one glass of milk per day to every child in Lima. Barrantes was known for being honest. Despite his high public profile, and even after becoming Lima mayor, he did not enrich himself or develop expensive habits, always (for example) driving the same sky-blue Volkswagen Beetle.Footnote 47 He also demonstrated media and television savvy, in contrast to other major Left figures in Peru such as Hugo Blanco. Although Peru's broadcast networks and most of its national newspapers opposed IU, Barrantes, especially after his election as mayor of Lima in 1983, was a frequent interviewee and transmitted an image of competence and charm.Footnote 48 These characteristics made Barrantes very popular, and because of his popularity, he drew in pragmatic, left-leaning voters attracted to the combination of the united partisan Left and an electable leader.Footnote 49
Barrantes's singular electoral clout was not disputed, for the most part, even by his rivals, and even after he lost two elections in the mid-1980s. After winning the Lima mayoral election in 1983 and briefly reaching the apogee of his internal power, Barrantes finished a distant second in the 1985 presidential election and narrowly lost his 1986 re-election bid for the Lima mayoralty. These losses partially tainted Barrantes's image of electoral prowess, leading some IU members and observers – especially those generally opposed to Barrantes – to overestimate IU's electoral prospects without him.Footnote 50 But as Maxwell Cameron observes in his in-depth analysis of IU's schism, IU radicals, even in the late 1980s, ‘recognized that Barrantes was the leader with the widest popular appeal – and that the withdrawal of Barrantes could weaken the [IU's] electoral prospects’.Footnote 51 Supporters of Barrantes's presidential nomination in 1990 repeatedly underlined in internal debates that he remained IU's strongest candidate and was probably the only Left candidate in Peru who stood any chance of winning.Footnote 52 They warned that if Barrantes departed, a large segment of the electorate would leave with him and likely shift its support from IU to APRA, causing an electoral setback or disaster for IU and a potential victory for its rival, APRA.Footnote 53 Top IU leaders thus vigorously sought to prevent Barrantes's exit until the end. The Secretary General of the Partido Comunista Peruano (Peruvian Communist Party, PCP), Jorge del Prado, for example, made ‘excessive concessions, seeking [Barrantes's] reincorporation in the failed hope that he would accept being the front's 1990 presidential candidate’.Footnote 54
Barrantes's Lack of Internal Dominance
In short, no Left figure emerged in Peru during the 1980s who could rival Barrantes in electoral clout. Barrantes's lack of dominance within IU, thus, did not stem from a shortage of external appeal. Indeed, a noteworthy feature of IU's internal politics was that Barrantes's unrivalled external appeal, almost universally recognised, did not translate into internal dominance. As Martín Tanaka writes of Barrantes in 1988 and 1989: ‘It is interesting to note the enormous distance between a Barrantes well positioned in the electoral preferences of the citizenry and his situation of extreme weakness within the Left … The separation between the electoral arena and internal party arena, the difficulty of investing the capital accumulated in one in the other, appears clearly.’Footnote 55
Barrantes's electoral indispensability did not translate into internal dominance for two broad reasons. First, radical IU elites, who constituted approximately half of the coalition's national leadership, were not primarily motivated by the desire to maximise vote share or govern on a large scale, and, by the end of the 1980s, some of them regarded the prospect of an IU presidential victory as threatening (about which more below). This reduced Barrantes's internal electoral leverage. Second, Barrantes had few sources of internal power other than his external appeal: his moral authority was limited; his relationship with powerful radical leaders was contentious and ultimately broke down completely; and radical IU members, who constituted a majority of the coalition's active rank-and-file, differed with Barrantes on major questions of programme and principle. These problems also worsened toward the end of the 1980s, and, consequently, Barrantes's internal power came to rest on little more than electoral leverage.
Clearly, Barrantes's internal challenges must be understood in the context of IU's moderate–radical divide. Like many successful new Left parties in Latin America,Footnote 56 IU was composed of radical and moderate tendencies. Although IU members were uniformly socialist and almost uniformly Marxist-Leninist,Footnote 57 radicals and moderates differed on how to pursue socialist transformation. Whereas moderates sought to transform Peru through participation in its democratic institutions, radicals sought to make revolution in the short to medium term. Radicals, of course, did value democratic participation; otherwise, they would not have joined IU or contested elections. But they participated in elections largely in order to campaign and engage in legislative opposition, both of which provided visibility and attracted members. They were more ambivalent and cautious than moderates about taking executive power locally or nationally. Some argued that governing might dilute IU's message, deliver unspectacular results, and therefore harm the Left's image.Footnote 58
Polarisation between moderates and radicals intensified in the late 1980s, as hyperinflation, recession and the Shining Path insurgency convulsed Peru. A central question arose: How should IU respond to Peru's security and economic crises, which threatened democratic stability? Moderates wanted to preserve democracy and capitalise electorally on the reputational collapse of IU's two main rivals, APRA and AP.Footnote 59 Since this would require attracting middle-sector voters, IU, they believed, needed to moderate its rhetoric and proposals.Footnote 60 Accordingly, moderates rejected armed struggle and advocated collaborating with the APRA government and Peruvian armed forces to stabilise the economy and defeat the Shining Path. Radicals offered a different response to the crisis of the late 1980s. They judged – arguably rationallyFootnote 61 – that the country was entering a revolutionary situation. Thus, in their view, organisational preparedness for revolution took priority over victory in the 1990 presidential election.Footnote 62 Radicals opposed allying with APRAFootnote 63 and the militaryFootnote 64 and resisted shifting to the ideological centre. Many were hesitant to reject armed struggle categorically.Footnote 65 Such actions and positions, they argued, could dilute the partisan Left's imageFootnote 66 and might put IU in power at a time of insoluble crisis.Footnote 67 Both would impede recruitment of foot soldiers – a top priority.
A key implication of the radicals’ worldview was that, for them, Barrantes's electoral coat-tails held limited value. Throughout the 1980s, IU radicals did not regard electoral failure – their own, much less IU's – as an existential risk or their ultimate concern. Some were wary of governing and hence of winning the executive positions that Barrantes sought. These perspectives hardened toward the end of the decade. In the late 1980s, radicals ‘were less interested in building the widest possible electoral base for the United Left than in building an organised, revolutionary alternative to existing power structures’.Footnote 68 Many radicals considered a 1990 presidential victory secondary;Footnote 69 some considered it counterproductive and potentially threatening.Footnote 70 All of these realities reduced Barrantes's internal electoral leverage.
Even more unfortunately for Barrantes, however, popular appeal was the main ‘card’ that he had to ‘play’ within IU. His most significant shortcoming as IU leader was that his internal power rested principally on electoral leverage – particularly as the 1980s drew to a close.
That Barrantes lacked additional sources of internal power followed, in large measure, from the conditions of his selection as coalition leader. Because the IU constituent parties were sectarian, IU founding leaders were not willing to cede the coalition's reins and lead nomination to a partisan rival. Barrantes was unaffiliated with the partiesFootnote 71 and regarded as fairly neutral between them.Footnote 72 His independence and neutrality, combined with his electoral potential, made him the consensus choice as leader.Footnote 73 But neutral, independent members are – almost by definition – weakly rooted in their parties. They typically lack the background and factional ties associated with internally dominant leaders. And so it was with Barrantes. His external origins made him acceptable but limited his internal power.
When made IU leader, Barrantes was an unknown labour lawyer and minor figure on the Peruvian Left.Footnote 74 As a youth and young adult, he had belonged to APRA and, in the late 1940s, served as APRA president of the University of San Marcos Student Federation. He had never held public office. More importantly, for three decades, he had not played a leadership role on the Left. Unlike various IU figures, he had not constructed or headed a party. He had not visibly engaged in the popular mobilisations stimulated by General Juan Velasco (1968–75) or the mass movement to topple General Morales Bermúdez (1975–80). Barrantes, in short, was not a founder of IU, in contrast to coalition leaders such as Javier Diez Canseco of the Partido Unificado Mariateguista (Mariateguista Unified Party, PUM) and Jorge del Prado of the PCP. One pro-Barrantes IU elite observed, Barrantes ‘did not found IU but was called to preside over it’.Footnote 75
Barrantes thus entered IU without moral authority. Throughout the 1980s, IU elites and commentators openly argued that he did not deserve to be IU leader. In December 1981, IU congressman Horacio Cevallos wrote: ‘[Barrantes] does not represent any of the organised political sectors, nor does he represent the masses. He is a novice lawyer, and we have made him, a substitute, a centre-forward in the leadership of the Left.’Footnote 76 After Barrantes resigned as IU president in the summer of 1987, left-leaning editorialist Fernando Tuesta critically highlighted Barrantes's pre-IU record:
On what basis did they elect [Barrantes] [IU leader]? […] For his political record …? That does not appear to be the reason. […] [I]t is enough to review what is noted as most noteworthy in his political career: a dip in the San Marcos pool when he was the Aprista president of the [San Marcos Student Federation] in an act against Nixon; the pen given to him by Zhou Enlai on a trip to China in 1964 with which he signed his entry application for the PCP; and from then until … 1980 [final ellipsis in the original].Footnote 77
Members have retrospectively articulated similar views. Osmar Gonzales states: ‘[T]he parties sustained that Barrantes was their creation; that the front was the result of the popular movement, and that [Barrantes's] personalised leadership was a contingent consequence.’Footnote 78 In the clever formulation of a moderate cadre: ‘Barrantes was accepted as a candidate but contested as a leader.’Footnote 79
In addition to lacking moral authority, Barrantes, a moderate, did not ideologically represent the predominantly radical base – especially in the late 1980s. From IU's inception, radical parties collectively had more members than did moderate parties, and radical leaders held an uninterrupted majority on the IU's national executive committee. Radicals’ upper hand strengthened in the mid- to late 1980s: in the 1985 congressional election, the two dominant radical parties – PUM and Unión de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Union of the Revolutionary Left, UNIR) – won significantly more seats than their moderate counterparts; PUM expanded greatly in 1985 and 1986;Footnote 80 and, in the late 1980s, IU's three largest parties – PUM, UNIR, and the moderate PCP – shifted left and established military arms.Footnote 81 The presence of a moderate like Barrantes at the helm thus became more of a structural problem for IU during the second half of the 1980s.
As IU shifted to the Left, and, later, as Peru plunged into crisis, the ideological gulf between Barrantes and IU radicals widened. First, radicals objected to the close relationship that developed between Barrantes and APRA leader Alan García in the mid-1980s. Radicals argued that García was using Barrantes to marginalise IU radicals and thus tame and divide IU. This perception fuelled two pivotal conflicts between Barrantes and IU activists in 1986 and 1987 that precipitated Barrantes's mid-1987 resignation as IU president.Footnote 82 Second, as Peru plunged into security and economic crisis, Barrantes argued that IU should commit to democracy, work to preserve Peru's democratic regime by collaborating with APRA and the army, and prioritise presidential victory in 1990. Barrantes's arguments, echoed by coalition moderates, had virtually no influence on radicals. Throughout 1989, IU's leading radical party, PUM, refused to repudiate armed struggle categorically.Footnote 83
Finally, Barrantes lacked strong cross-factional ties. Because he was an outsider, he did not enter IU with strong pre-existing relationships across factions. Moreover, as IU president, he did not act as a cross-factional broker or arbiter. He ‘tended to be an aloof leader who was disengaged from the internal affairs of IU coalition …’Footnote 84 By the mid-1980s, he advocated the expulsion of PUM and UNIR.Footnote 85 In resigning as IU president in mid-1987, he abandoned the formal pretence of standing above faction or representing the entire coalition.Footnote 86 Thereafter, he opted for ‘marginalisation from the practical affairs of the alliance’.Footnote 87
For most of the 1980s, the role of cross-factional broker was assumed by leaders of the neutral bloc, a moderate faction composed of the PCP and Left Christian independents.Footnote 88 The neutral bloc constituted the organisational core of IU's moderate wing, and its leaders firmly opposed any divisions or expulsions within IU.Footnote 89 During the second half of the 1980s, neutral bloc leaders – especially Henry Pease – sought to fuse the radical and moderate sectors of IU into a single party.Footnote 90 Toward the end of the 1980s, neutral bloc leaders such as Pease and Jorge del Prado regularly met with Barrantes, on the one hand, and radical leaders, on the other, in an attempt to maintain coalition unity. Thus, far from having cross-factional ties, Barrantes headed one of the two factions between which neutral bloc leaders mediated.Footnote 91
Schism and Collapse
By the late 1980s, Barrantes's status in IU had become a highly polarising topic within the coalition. Debate at the first IU congress in January 1989 centred on whether he should receive the 1990 presidential nomination.Footnote 92 The national executive committee, controlled by radicals, dictated that a closed primary election would determine the nominee. Radicals stated their intention to field an alternative candidate. Although members of the neutral bloc supported Barrantes's nomination, they were not willing to threaten to defect with him to support a separate presidential bid; instead, they pressed Barrantes to run in the primary election. Consequently, Barrantes lacked sufficient leverage to persuade IU radicals to nominate him without an internal election.
Unable to impose his candidacy undemocratically, Barrantes faced a dilemma: he could run in a closed IU primary and risk being defeated by a radical candidate, or he could defect from IU with a small club of moderate allies and run in the first round of the presidential election without IU's label and machines behind him. Barrantes believed, with reason, that he might lose a closed IU primary, as the parties of the radical bloc, given their numbers and capacity to mobilise members, had an advantage over moderates. Barrantes calculated that his best chance of winning Peru's presidency was to contest the first round on a new, non-IU ticket. If he reached the second round (a plausible prospect in late 1989), a Centre–Left coalition that included the core of IU would be likely to coalesce around him. By this rationale, Barrantes defected from IU – and ultimately killed it. In the 1990 presidential election, IU candidate Henry Pease won 8 per cent of the vote, while Barrantes, newly divorced from IU and competing against its label and machines, garnered a mere 5 per cent. Shortly after, Barrantes retired from politics, and IU, mortally wounded, continued to splinter and collapsed.
Objections and Alternative Explanations
One might object to the foregoing case study by arguing that IU was bound to collapse regardless of who led it. After all, IU was not a party but a coalition of parties, and, despite a shared socialist orientation, these parties were sectarian and ideologically divergent, with social democratic elements and unreformed, revolutionary Marxist-Leninist ones.Footnote 93 Moreover, the crises of the late 1980s deeply polarised IU and rendered the revolutionary Left anathema to many Peruvian voters. It might be argued, in light of these facts, that IU's split was inevitable, and that, even if IU had not split, it would have electorally collapsed. Along the same lines, one might argue that no Left leader in Peru could have simultaneously maintained the support of IU radicals – who controlled the IU's machinery – and appealed to the wider Peruvian electorate.Footnote 94
These objections are unpersuasive for several reasons. First, they rest on the premise that, by the end of the 1980s, IU moderates and radicals were too polarised to collaborate or remain in alliance with each other. But this premise is demonstrably false. As already observed, only a small subset of IU moderates – Barrantes and a club of allies – chose defection over continued collaboration in 1989. The neutral bloc, which was composed of moderates, and which surpassed the Barrantista reformist bloc in size and organisational strength, remained in IU. If Barrantes had not defected, the neutral bloc's efforts to convert IU into a party might well have succeeded.Footnote 95 Thus, it would be ahistorical to argue that, during the polarising, pressure-laden period of the late 1980s, IU radicals and moderates were fated to split.
Second, it is not obvious that IU, on balance, faced greater obstacles to cohesion and survival than other new Left parties in Latin America that survived intact. A number of Latin America's successful new Left parties were, like IU, initially characterised by factionalisation, ideological difference and internecine conflict over programme, strategy and resources (e.g., Uruguay's Frente Amplio [Broad Front, FA], Brazil's PT, Mexico's PRD, El Salvador's FMLN). Moreover, there were important factors working in IU's favour. First, territorial organisation is critical for successful party-building,Footnote 96 and IU had one of the strongest territorial organisations on the Latin American Left during the third wave,Footnote 97 with constituent party branches stretching across Peru and, by the end of the 1980s, a total of 130,000–150,000 active members.Footnote 98 Second, IU did not attain national power during its formative years. Although this may not sound like an advantage, several high-profile new Left parties in Latin America suffered brand dilution and electorally collapsed because they quickly rose to national power and, once in government, shifted to the Right by adopting unpopular austerity policies.Footnote 99 By contrast, IU remained in the opposition and firmly anti-neoliberal throughout its formative decade. This benefited IU by enabling it to develop a clear Left programmatic brand.Footnote 100 Third, and crucially, although the crisis of the late 1980s exacerbated IU's internal contradictions, it also discredited IU's main rival, APRA, which was in power during the crisis. APRA's reputational collapse created an opportunity for IU to establish itself as Peru's strongest partisan organisation – and thus provided an incentive for its factions to remain united. In short, it was not necessarily obvious or inevitable, ex ante, that IU faced a more unfavourable mix of circumstances than other, ultimately successful new Left parties in Latin America.
Third, even if we concede, for the sake of argument, that IU did face a more unfavourable mix of circumstances, it does not follow that these circumstances made IU's fatal schism inevitable. Indeed, it would be facile to claim, with the benefit of hindsight, that IU's external challenges and organisational structure doomed it to failure. IU's challenges may have rendered collapse more likely than in other new Left cases, but events have multiple causes, and this article purports to identify one decisive variable in IU's split, not the only one. As noted earlier, I focus on this particular variable – the type of party leader – because it remains undertheorised in existing literature on party-building, and because it sheds new light on IU's collapse.
Fourth, although one might suppose that, if IU had not split, it still would have electorally collapsed due to voters’ rejection of IU radicals’ revolutionary leftism, there is evidence to the contrary. Even in the early months of 1989, as the Shining Path was encircling Lima, national polls forecast that Barrantes and IU would finish either first or second in the 1990 general election.Footnote 101 Moreover, IU performed remarkably well after Barrantes's defection. In the 1990 congressional election, although 5 per cent of voters supported Barrantes's Izquierda Socialista (Socialist Left, IS), and although an unknowable and almost certainly larger number of former and prospective IU supporters flocked to non-Left alternatives – especially Alberto Fujimori and his Cambio 90 (Change 90)Footnote 102 – IU still garnered 10 per cent of the vote.Footnote 103 Thus, it is reasonable to assume that, if a split had not occurred, IU, while it might not have won a national election, would have remained a major electoral force at the national level regardless of whether Barrantes remained at the top of the ticket.
Fifth and finally, there are two forms of evidence supporting the basic counterfactual assumption on which this article rests – that an externally appealing, internally dominant IU leader could have existed and prevented a schism. First, there is within-case evidence. As already observed, several figures in IU had strong cross-factional ties, even at the end of the 1980s (e.g., Pease, Ames, del Prado). Other figures had considerable moral authority among IU's base (e.g., Diez Canseco, PUM's leader). To imagine an externally appealing, internally dominant IU leader, we need only conceive a hypothetical scenario in which one of these leaders (e.g., Pease, del Prado, Diez Canseco) also happened to be popular with voters, or had the potential to become popular. Unless this hypothetical scenario is implausible, IU's leadership deficit was a product of misfortune, not necessity. That is, it may have been unfortunate, not necessary, that IU, instead of having a single leader who combined external appeal and internal dominance, had one leader with unrivalled popularity (i.e., Barrantes) and other leaders with key sources of internal dominance (e.g., Pease, del Prado, Diez Canseco).
Of course, one might claim that the above hypothetical scenario is implausible. One could argue, for example, that, by the late 1980s, no leader could be acceptable to IU radicals and, simultaneously, externally appealing. Yet, such an argument implies, among other things, that IU radicals demanded a coalition leader who shared their revolutionary leftism. They did not. Although radicals opposed Barrantes's presidential nomination in 1990, they did not demand his expulsion from IU, nor did they state that they would defect, or refuse to support him, if he won the nomination in the aforementioned closed primary. Moreover, after Barrantes's defection, radicals ultimately assented to and supported the presidential candidacy of a moderate – independent Henry Pease.
Second, there is cross-national comparative evidence for the article's basic counterfactual premise. The ‘most similar’ cases of Brazil's PT and Mexico's PRD further suggest that an externally appealing, internally dominant leader could have emerged in Peru during the 1980s. Admittedly, there are no perfect cross-national comparisons, and the early PT and PRD differed from IU in numerous ways. In particular, as already noted, the early PT and PRD were both parties, not coalitions, and neither encountered circumstances as extreme as those that IU faced in the late 1980s. Yet, the early PT and PRD did share a number of analytically relevant characteristics with IU. They were left-wing. They were born in the opposition, with limited access to state resources and mass media. They did not emerge from armed struggle – as, for example, the FMLN and FSLN did – which is relevant because shared violent struggle can generate organisational cohesion.Footnote 104 They had powerful grassroots organisations during their formative periods that mobilised masses of voters. They were heterogeneous fronts composed of revolutionary and reformist factions frequently engaged in ideological conflicts and power struggles. The PT and PRD depended on externally popular leaders – Lula da Silva and Cárdenas, respectively – for their early electoral competitiveness.Footnote 105 Their leaders, like Barrantes, suffered electoral setbacks after early breakout performances and saw their images of external appeal decline as a result.Footnote 106 While sharing all of these characteristics with IU, the early PT and PRD differed on (1) the dependent variable and (2) the independent variable highlighted in this article; that is, they survived intact rather than splitting (DV), and they had leaders who combined external appeal with internal dominance (IV). On this basis, I treat the PT and PRD as ‘most similar’ cases to IU.Footnote 107
The cases of the PT and PRD are both instructive for the IU case, albeit in different ways. Lula was a moderate within the PT, but he still had enormous clout with the party's ‘extreme Left’.Footnote 108 Cárdenas was a radical within the PRD but was still, by far, the party's most electable figure. Although, again, there are many differences between IU, PT and PRD, these basic facts at least suggest that, in a possible world, an IU moderate could have acquired the support of IU radicals, or an IU radical could have been externally appealing.
Let us look a bit closer at both cases, beginning with the PRD. Cárdenas had immense moral authority on the Mexican Left, largely due to his lineage.Footnote 109 He cultivated cross-factional ties as PRD leader.Footnote 110 He ideologically represented the predominantly radical PRD rank-and-file.Footnote 111 Consequently, he dominated the PRD's internal affairs.Footnote 112 He played a ‘substituting role for the [PRD's] lack of institutionalisation’,Footnote 113 regularly making key party decisions and adjudicating internal conflicts without debate or negotiation.Footnote 114 In contrast to Barrantes, he succeeded in securing the PRD's presidential candidacy repeatedly in 1988, 1994 and 2000, with limited internal resistance.
Lula was similarly dominant within the PT.Footnote 115 He was a morally authoritative figure, given his humble origins, working-class status, and leadership role in the PT's founding labour and democratising struggles.Footnote 116 He had strong pre-existing cross-factional ties and maintained them as PT leader, serving as the party's main negotiator and guarantor of agreements.Footnote 117 In ideological and programmatic terms, he represented the predominantly moderate PT rank-and-file, drawn primarily from Lula's own labour union movement.Footnote 118 Lula secured the PT's presidential candidacy four times, with virtually no internal contestation, and prevailed upon the PT's radical tendencies to moderate their rhetoric and demands in an effort to broaden the party's electoral appeal.Footnote 119
The divergent fates of IU, PT and PRD suggest the vital role that party leaders can play in new party survival. Lula and Cárdenas dictated the internal affairs of their parties and repeatedly won their parties’ presidential nominations with ease, even when their ideological opponents controlled their national party organisations (e.g., Lula in 1994), and even when their images of electoral clout had suffered due to landslide losses in presidential elections (e.g., Lula in 1998; Cárdenas in 2000). Because they were internally dominant, they never had strong incentives to defect from the early PT and PRD.
Barrantes's experience as IU leader starkly contrasts with Lula's and Cárdenas's. In contrast to Lula, Barrantes showed almost no capacity to tame IU radicals. In contrast to Cárdenas, Barrantes did not function as IU's informal decider or arbiter.Footnote 120 In contrast to both leaders, Barrantes was never described as the ‘moral’ leader of IU. Most importantly, he ultimately proved unable to secure IU's presidential nomination, which triggered his fatal defection.
It is also worth noting that in unprompted statements during interviews with the author, three top IU elites, all belonging to different factions, cited leadership as a key variable, or the key variable, that distinguished IU from the PT (Henry Pease, Javier Diez Canseco and Santiago Pedraglio).Footnote 121
Conclusion
This article has argued that externally appealing, internally dominant leaders can prevent new party schisms, and it has illustrated the mechanisms of this argument at work in the representative case of Peru's IU. The article makes several main contributions. First, it proposes an original, empirically grounded theory that contributes to an emerging body of literature on the sources of new party cohesion (see Introduction). Second, through an application of this theory, it sheds new light on a consequential event, IU's schism. Third, and most broadly, the article posits that the type of leader a new party has can be critical for its success or failure. As noted in the Introduction, scholars of party-building rarely focus on the role of leaders, for fear of excessive voluntarism. Consequently, the relationship between leader type and party-building outcome – particularly in its positive variants – remains undertheorised. Given the weakness of party systems in much of the developing world, and the importance of strong parties to democratic quality and stability, this relationship merits serious research, and the current article is an attempt to contribute to that research.
Briefly in closing, does the argument in this article contain any lessons for Peru's new Left party, the Frente Amplio (Broad Front, FA), and its leader, Verónika Mendoza? In the 2016 general election, the FA became the first left-wing party in decades to achieve electoral success at the national level. Mendoza was placed third in the first round of the presidential election, with 19 per cent of the vote, and FA candidates garnered 14 per cent of the overall congressional vote. But party-building is a very difficult task.Footnote 122 In order to take root, new parties generally need to have, among other things, a strong territorial organisation composed of committed activists, which IU had, and which FA lacks. On the other hand, FA is not facing some of IU's contextual or organisational challenges (e.g., sectarian factions; profound national crisis). The article's theoretical argument carries lessons for FA leader, Verónika Mendoza. At present, FA depends on Mendoza's external electoral appeal. Yet, to be an internally dominant figure, and thus to minimise the likelihood of schism, Mendoza cannot rely on external appeal alone. She must strive to represent her active base, to forge constructive relationships across the factions, and, to the extent possible, to draw upon any special sources of moral authority that she might have (e.g., fluency in Quechua). These measures may help her to keep FA united, which in turn will help FA's electoral (and therefore survival) prospects.
