How Party Activism Survives: Uruguay’s Frente Amplio, by Verónica Pérez Bentancur, Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez, and Fernando Rosenblatt, is a superb book and a must-read for scholars interested in parties and democracy. Its virtues are many. The writing is concise and plain. The authors pose a clear, important question: Why has grassroots activism persisted in the Frente Amplio (FA), unlike in so many other parties? They provide a plausible, interesting answer: that formal rules established at the FA’s founding led party activists to reproduce themselves over decades. The book is well organized: the authors effectively introduce the question, argument, and methods; provide necessary context regarding Uruguayan politics and the FA in government; thoroughly describe their dependent variable; elaborate the multiple levels of their argument; and, finally, place the FA in comparative perspective. Throughout, they make superb use of qualitative methods; indeed, the book is a shining example of transparent, rigorous qualitative research.
The labor-based FA (est. 1971) is the most electorally potent force in Uruguay. Since the country’s 1984 transition from military dictatorship to democracy, it has achieved and maintained remarkable electoral success, holding the presidency from 2005 until 2020 and a plurality or majority of seats in the legislative lower house from 2000 to the present. What makes the FA unique, however, is the persistence of its activists. Many successful parties depend on activists in their early years, but after the initial period of party development, party activism usually dwindles. Elites wrest control from the base; volunteer labor gives way to paid work, social action to electoralism. Clientelistic linkages may supplant (or at least come to supplement) programmatic ones. Remarkably, the FA, despite its electoral success, has avoided these outcomes. It remains mass-organic rather than electoral-professional, and programmatic rather than clientelistic.
To this day, thousands of local FA activists meet on a weekly basis to discuss current affairs and party strategy and policy. They monitor voting booths at elections. A large fraction pay dues. They are not clientelistic brokers, in contrast to the Peronist foot soldiers (called punteros) who channel services to loyal voters in Argentina. They are not functionaries or officials; only 1 or 2% hold paid positions within the FA apparatus, and fewer than one-quarter hold or have held public office.
Importantly, they constrain the FA-in-government. In 2006, FA activists pressured President Tabaré Vázquez (2005–10) not to sign a free trade agreement with the United States. In 2008, they blocked his attempt to grant amnesty to former officials of the military dictatorship. In general, they reduce the “likelihood of…dramatic policy [switches]” to the center or right (p. 125), helping prevent brand dilution.
The reproduction of activism over decades makes the FA a “deviant case.” Even programmatic, historically mass-based parties such as the Chilean Socialists (PS) and Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) have oligarchized and become electoral-professional since their countries democratized. What made the FA different? Why has it maintained a vibrant, influential activist base, in contrast to more typical cases like the PS and PT? That is the authors’ central question. What is their answer?
The authors highlight that grassroots activists were central in founding the FA and that, from the beginning, they demanded a role in internal decision making. The FA leadership acceded, developing two separate structures that remain in place to this day. FA members with political aspirations would join “the coalition”—any of the member organizations that contest for local, regional, and national office under the FA label. Members who wished to engage in activism, but who did not aspire to office, would join “the movement”: territorial or functional base-level committees.
In 1986, shortly after Uruguay’s transition to democracy, the FA granted one-third of the seats in its highest organs—most importantly, the National Plenary—to delegates from the movement. (Later, the movement’s seat share rose to one-half.) The Plenary is the FA’s supreme decision-making body: it generates the party’s internal statutes, including its official program, and selects its presidential candidates. Any action by the Plenary requires a nearly unanimous vote. Thus, since 1986, the movement has been able to veto any platform proposal or presidential nominee and to block any attempt to change the rules that empower it.
As the authors show, the coalition and movement cannot interfere with each other by design. The movement does not participate in the selection or recruitment of candidates and public officials (except, as noted, at the presidential level). The coalition does not distribute patronage or other resources through the movement, nor does it have a role in the selection of movement delegates. These arrangements ensure that the movement remains autonomous from the party-in-government, preventing the FA as a whole from oligarchizing or shifting too far in the direction of electoral-professionalism.
Notably, there is little incentive for the FA-in-government to maintain the movement; the FA “has enough resources…to operate without volunteers” (p. 106). But the movement’s power provides committed adherents with individual and collective incentives to become or remain activists, as well as to recruit new ones. FA activists believe, with reason, that they significantly shape the FA’s identity, program, and policies. Because they value their efficacy, they have a vested interest in surviving.
A simple theoretical question lies at the book’s heart: Under what conditions does party activism survive? The authors’ broad theoretical contribution is to highlight the role of institutional design and path dependence. Party activism can survive, they suggest, if leaders establish the right rules at the party’s founding. From the beginning, FA leaders chose to share power with activists; they insulated them from elite pressure and inducements, and they gave them the capacity to veto reforms that would erode activist influence. As a result, FA activists, over the decades, have had incentives to reproduce themselves and the capacity to maintain power within the party; in addition, there is no elite interference that might erode their commitment to policy and program.
We might ask why these rules became institutionalized in the FA. Designing rules that insulate and empower activists provides no guarantee that elites will adhere to them for decades on end. Indeed, relatively few parties attain high levels of internal routinization. Why is the FA different? What explains the compliance of its elites? This line of inquiry, I submit, might lead to a fuller account of how party activism survives. Perhaps the authors, or other scholars, could pursue it in the future.
Verónica Pérez, Rafael Piñeiro, and Fernando Rosenblatt have written a stellar book. It is empirically rich, theoretically interesting, and methodologically exemplary. Regarding method, the authors expertly apply cutting-edge qualitative tools—thick description, systematic process tracing, a large online survey – to support their central descriptive and causal claims. The effect is an impressive, persuasive piece of scholarship. Party and democracy scholars would do well to read it.
