Towards local power: the effect of electoral institutions on the institutionalization of subnational party systems in Brazil and Argentina
In federal states, political parties can be considered multilevel organizations, as they compete for power at the subnational level. When a stable set of parties behaves in minimally patterned ways, the party system is institutionalized. The proposed study analyzes how the electoral institutions influence the level of institutionalization of the subnational party systems in Brazil and Argentina. The two central questions are: i) to what extent are party systems at the subnational level institutionalized in these countries? And ii) how do electoral institutions explain the variations in the degree of institutionalization of these systems over time? The main objective will be to analyze comparatively and longitudinally the extent and causes of the diversity of party systems in the Brazilian states and the Argentine provinces. Drawing on the reconceptualization of party system institutionalization (PSI) by Mainwaring (2018), the goal is to measure the level of stability of inter-party competition at the local level through several indicators. These include membership of the party system, parties´ vote shares, and parties´ ideological preferences. From the elections for governor and state legislative assemblies in Brazil (1989-2018) and Argentina (1983-2015) since the redemocratization, I intend to verify if the differences in the electoral rules in both countries, such as threshold regulation, list system, and executive term limits, account for the variation of the subnational PSI. To assess this relationship a cross-sectional time-series regression will be performed. Considering that different types of federalism can lead to different types of party systems (Hamann, 1999), it is argued that in Argentine provinces, where the governors have substantial autonomy to design local institutions, a high PSI is more likely than in Brazil´s states. To understand the democratic functioning and the dynamics of party competition in federal systems it is crucial to look at the real forces of the political system, and they are not only at the national level but also in local power.