Party system stability in Latin America: A comparative study

It has been argued that party systems should always be on "working order" because stable party systems correlate with stable democracies, and whenever party systems become dysfunctional, democracy becomes dysfunctional as well. In Latin America, there is legitimate concern for party system stability precisely because of such outcome. Political parties in the region not only face internal and external challenges, but also the added pressure of being part of democratic consolidation. Most importantly, Latin American politics currently present a great challenge: how to restore citizen trust in political parties and party systems.;This dissertation addresses the concern of how to prevent future episodes of party system collapse that can undermine democratic governance, and answers a crucial question: what are the conditions that result in party system stability? I hypothesize that party system stability results from the institutionalization of a pattern of interactions between political parties created at a prior moment from an intersection between the assumption of partisan self-interest and factors external to the parties. To test the hypothesis, I have created a qualitative research design that combines single case studies with a cross-country comparison, and have chosen South American countries (Venezuela, Peru, Argentina, and Chile) to analyze. The possibility of causal complexity will also be examined.;The analysis will reveal that different contexts can result in different combinations of exogenous factors and the assumption of partisan self-interest, and that not all combinations of exogenous variables and partisan self-interest are conducive to institutionalization, but it will also show that the hypothesis was confirmed for the most part. The case studies will show that party system stability depends on how a pattern of interactions between parties institutionalizes in complex causal processes involving the assumption of partisan self-interest and exogenous variables.