Beyond institutions: the relationship between political elites and citizenship in Latin America

Abstract

On current literature of political representation, everybody knows that political parties play a keystone. According to famous Katz and Mair work (1995), political parties are channels and linkage between citizenship and institutions and previous parties literature had focused just on social dimension: how parties should organize socially to reach the power. After this work, representation and parties literature have developed their institutional dimension (Morgernstern, 2003; Alcántara, 2006). Even some research has the audacity to combine both dimensions. In relation to Latin American, studies of representation have been related to political parties and elites under an institutional approach. The linkage between citizenship and institutions has weakened during past decades. This phenomenon has triggered that new parties have emerged with political representation generating a realignment of many party systems that were supposed to be stable, e.g. Costa Rica in 2018 elections and El Salvador in 2019 elections. As a result of this new political scenario in Latin American, several new parties competed on electoral arena with successful outcomes. This kind of parties have introduced new issues related to institutional and partisan mechanisms of political participation enhancing a better interaction between elites and citizenship. The traditional parties discussed and assumed new positions about the introduction of these new issues. Thus, there is a shift in Latin American politics parameters. A political interaction beyond elections as a space where citizenship chooses among electoral programs and representatives and parties that will defend them (Müller, 2000). Despite these new political parameters, do citizens have similar o different political values and attitudes to political representatives? There is a discussion of the values and ideas of current political representatives that are linked to values and attitudes citizenship and their own programmatic ideas (Luna & Zechmeister, 2005; Luna 2007; Morales Quiroga, 2014; Joignant, Morales & Fuentes, 2016; Herrera & Morales, 2018; Otero Felipe, Mateos & Rivas, 2020). This analysing process is called political congruence. Regarding this last premise, some questions arise: which kind of issues are more related or linked among representatives and citizenship? Have the linkages between representatives and citizenship been weakened or strengthened? Are political parties with the greatest ideological congruence with citizenship the most successful? Or parties with the greatest ideological congruence with their own programs? The aim of this panel is to explore and develop a deeper knowledge of ideological congruence through empirical research using different database of political attitudes (LAPOP, Latinobarómetro), party positions (MARPOR, PELA) in the main dimensions of electoral competition in Latin American political systems.

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