Party Membership in Latin American Political Parties: What is the
Role of the Militantes?
Tomáš Došek
Instituto de Iberoamérica
University of Salamanca
tomas.dosek@usal.es
Very preliminary draft. Please do not cite without permission of the author.
Comments welcome.
Paper prepared to be presented at the workshop “Contemporary Meanings of Party Membership”,
ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops 2014, April 10-15, 2014, University of Salamanca, Spain.
Abstract:
Contrary to the situation in Europe, the research of political parties’ internal structure in Latin
America has been rather limited. Moreover, comparative study of party membership is virtually
inexistent (Levitsky 2001; Wills-Otero 2009; for some exceptions, see Alcántara Sáez and Freidenberg
2003; Webb and White 2007; Alenda 2011; Ponce 2013; and Combes 2011; Muñoz Armenta and
Pulido Gómez 2010 for case studies on Mexico). The goal of this paper is to contribute to fill the gap
that evidences this area of study of party politics from the perspective of party membership. To
achieve this goal, I examine the statutes of the principal political parties in Latin America and analyse
the role given to the party members in approximately 60 political parties in the region. I organize this
information according to three dimensions: entry requirements, members’ rights and members’
duties (in formal terms). First, I explore the conditions that the persons interested to become party
members have to accomplish, focusing on whether there is any special condition. Second, I look at
the role party members have with respect to the internal democracy, i.e., candidate selection and
programme formulation, and if there is any condition of membership seniority. Third, I analyse the
extent to what party are obliged to pay membership dues. I argue that these aspect are rather
homogenous among the Latin American countries and cannot explain the differences in party
membership levels. I posit some possible hypothesis and claim that these difference are due to a
specific combination of historical, institutional and party-centred variables. This paper constitutes
the first part of a larger project which will be complemented with an expert survey on party
strategies regarding the role and influence of party members (second part) and with a field work
consisting interviewing both party elites to contrast the official membership data and of interviews to
grassroots party members (in particular about its motivations and its ideological positions) from
various political parties-case studies selected based on the first and second part of the project.
Keywords:
Political parties, Party members, party statutes, party membership levels, Latin America
2
I. Introduction1
The study of party membership has been largely limited to the European countries, Canada and
United States (see Heidar 2006 for an overview). Some of the more recent investigations has also
includes Post-Communist Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries (Mair and van Biezen 2001;
van Biezen et al. 2012). There has been a rather little attention dedicated to party membership in
Latin America context. The goal of this paper is to contribute to fill this gap with an analysis of the
significance of what is the militancia in the region. Thus, I examine the meaning of party membership
in Latin American political parties according to its party statutes. Though it deals with rather formal
interpretation of the reality, it makes a first step in knowing what the party member figure means
outside the traditionally studied regions2 and what are the membership levels in Latin America.
The militantes have received little academic attention in Latin America (for some exceptions, see
Muñoz Armenta and Pulido Gómez 2010; Combes 2011; Sousa Braga et al. 2012; Ponce 2013). This
could be partly because the general topic of party internal structure remains rather understudied
(Levitsky 2001; Wills-Otero 2009) and our knowledge of the decision process inside the “black box”
(Levitsky 2001) of political parties is still insufficient (Luna and Rovira Kaltwasser 2011). Other
reasons might see political parties in Latin America as less important in the presence of clientelistic
structures (Hilgers 2012) and party system crises (Mainwaring et al. 2006) and party brands dilution
(Lupu forthcoming). Still other explication could be that no militantes exist at all and if so it is almost
impossible to study them because the membership is rather informal and its role is limited or
restricted to the campaign participation.
This contrasts with some of the recent political parties’ efforts in Latin America in order to increase
the number of its members or the regular calling for its participation in the internal candidate
selection and during the election process itself. For example, in Mexico the Partido Revolucionario
Institutionalista (PRI) claims that is going to reach ten million militantes in the following months after
registering the membership census of 5,85 million members3 before the official electoral institution
1
I thank Flavia Freidenberg for her helpful comments on this version of the paper and Monserrat Rengifo y
Verónica Ayala for their research assistance. I also thank Roxana Silva from the Consejo Nacional Electoral for
the data on party membership in Ecuador.
2
This study supposes the first part of a larger project that seeks in its second phase to carry out an expert
survey to know the real role of the militantes in the political party live in the region and contrast to what extent
the perception of the experts reflect the role party statutes attribute them. In the third part, I will design a field
work to interview party members from some of the Latin American political parties based on the information
from the two previous phases.
3
http://noticias.terra.com.mx/mexico/politica/pri-busca-10-millones-demilitantes,f95cc18de2015410VgnVCM3000009af154d0RCRD.html
3
Instituto Federal Electoral (Federal Electoral Institute) in March 20144. For its part, in Bolivia the
Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) pretends to celebrate its 19th anniversary with one million party
members5. In Chile, which suffers the lowest levels of citizens’ identification with political parties the
absolute number of party members grew between 2001 and 2011 by 44% from 567 thousands to 816
thousand militantes6 (though not reaching even the 10% of all registered voters). In Dominican
Republic, the two main parties (Partido de la Liberación Dominicana (PLD) and Partido Revolucionario
Dominicano (PRD)) estimates its party membership numbers to be almost half of the voters in the
last presidential election in 2012.
This numbers and trends seems quite different from what we know about the party membership in
Europe where the “decline” issue has dominated the research agenda in the recent years (Scarrow
2000; Mair and van Biezen 2001, Heidar 2006; Scarrow and Gezgor 2010; Van Biezen et al. 2012), the
mean percentage of the members totals around 5% of the electorate (Van Biezen et al. 2012) and the
research has moved to analyse the transformation of the meaning of party membership. Still though,
we know much more about who the party members are, why they join political parties, what their
ideological position is as compared to the rest of the citizens, what are their rights and duties and
how they participate.
From this point of view, in this paper I take on a rather limited task to analyse the party statutes in
Latin America to see what are the requisites for the persons interested in the party membership and
what privileges they receive once being the militantes of a party. Nevertheless, this review will be
complemented with the review of secondary literature and mass media information, party elite
opinion about the rank-and-file members and the national legislation in order to obtain some
possible explanations at the aggregate level of the varying levels of party membership in Latin
American countries.
The structure of this paper is dividef in four sections. First, I review the recent literature on political
parties’ internal organization in Latin America, with particular emphasis on party membership in a
broader context. Second, I critically discuss the official numbers of party members in main Latin
American parties. Third, I analyse content of national party/electoral laws regarding the minimal
4
The electoral voters register is about 80 million persons.
5
http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia/politica/28032014/mas_celebrara_19_aniversario_con_un_millon_de_milita
ntes
6
http://diario.latercera.com/2012/01/21/01/contenido/reportajes/25-97909-9-militancias-politicasaumentan-en-10-anos.shtml
4
membership levels for new parties and also
the requisites parties establish for the persons
interested to become militantes, its right and duties and make an attempt to classify this
information. Fourth, I hypothesize about the possible correlates of the relatively high number of
party militants in the region and the differences reveal among them. The paper concludes with a
brief outline of the research agenda for the Latin American political parties members.
II. Party Membership in Latin America: State of the Art
More than a decade ago, Levitsky (2001) reminded us that we know surprisingly little about the
internal functioning of Latin American political parties. By the same time, Alcántara Sáez y
Freidenberg (2003) edited three volumes that focused directly on the internal organization of
political parties, thus shedding some light on this forgotten aspect of the political party studies in the
region. As pointed out by the editors (Alcántara Sáez y Freidenberg 2003: 11-15), until then only very
little work had been done on this aspect in comparative fashion, though there existed some case
studies. Political parties had been studied rather from its external dimension, focusing on it electoral,
governmental and legislative performance, and its relation to the democratization process that was
taking place in the region.
Almost a decade after the path-breaking contribution that made the three volumes by Alcántara Sáez
and Freidenberg (2003), Wills-Otero (2009) posited that the research agenda focused more directly
on party internal organization and included also the agenda that deals with the party adaptation to
the changing environment and new conditions and challenges, underscoring the differences that
exists among the parties in the region that has been frequently treated as a whole. In this sense, the
book edited by Alcántara (2006), reviewed by Wills-Otero (2009), calls the attention specifically on
the role of both politicians and party members inside the parties7. Overall, Wills-Otero (2009) found
that the focus shifted from the structural analysis to a more party-centred approximation (i.e., taking
parties as units of analysis), theory building and explications.
All these authors and also the books reviewed by Levitsky (2001) and Wills-Otero (2009)8 have
contributed greatly to our knowledge of the actual internal working of Latin American political
parties. One of the aspects that Levitsky (2001) highlights is the absence of knowledge of parties’
membership levels, organizational densities and party members itself. This might be due to the
absence of comparative data, either from cross-national public opinion survey (lack of them and/or
7
See the chapter by Ruiz Rodríguez (2006) on the perception of party elites of the internal democracy and the
roles of party members.
8
See the respective articles and the Volume 62 of América Latina Hoy, Revista de Ciencias Sociales dedicated to
“Party organizations”.
5
the corresponding questions) or from the party registers (and the lack of confidence in them), low
importance of party members, presence of (neo-)populist leaders that do not need the parties at all
(and by consequences they get by without the party members). Besides, Latin American parties have
been viewed, on the one hand, as weekly institutionalized, without roots in the society and rather
limited members’ base or, on the other hand, highly centralized structures with a great
predominance and control of party elites and a concomitant minimal role of rank-and-file members.
To my best knowledge, there are rather few attempts to estimate the party membership levels in a
comparative manner in Latin America. Arguably, the first effort was carried out in the edited volume
by Alcántara Sáez and Freidenberg (2003) where each chapter on a particular country includes one
section that deals with the party membership, its level and the role of the militantes within the
parties. However, hard data on party membership were difficult to find so exact numbers are rather
scarce, and when they appear the author take them with precaution. So, those sections rely rather
on qualitative data, interviews, secondary literature and also a survey conducted with the party
members (though this included also some party leaders). Thus, the major finding is the great
heterogeneity that exists with respect to the requirements the militantes face, and the rights, duties
and levels of participation they show.
Other authors have focused on selected countries or sub-regions. Roncagliolo and Meléndez (2007)
edited a volume on internal structure of Andean political parties. Regarding the role of party
members, the general rule seems to be that the numbers (where available) are overestimated9. In
Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia the data directly does not exist or the party leaders have no
estimation. Whereas in the former countries (Bolivia and Ecuador), the parties were undergoing deep
transformations and a crisis of representation, in the latter (Colombia) there is almost no
communication between the national and local level (Botero and Alvira 2012). In Venezuela there is a
downward trend in party membership levels as to the traditional parties and a relatively high number
of militantes in the Movimiento V República (chavismo)10 reaching according to the estimates about 2
million persons (López Maya and Meléndez 2007). In Perú, the majority of the parties have some
estimation, though according to the authors these numbers are highly overinflated (Meléndez 2007).
In a recent volume on political parties in new democracies (Central and Eastern Europe and Latin
America), five countries from the region were included: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica and
Mexico (Webb and White 2007). The authors of the respective chapters approach party membership
9
The estimations are made by the very own politicians interviewed by each author.
Today, MVR is integrated in the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela.
10
6
from the party organizational strength perspective. Confirming the trend from Andean countries,
these five countries also show diverging tendencies both among the countries and its political
parties. For example, in Mexico all three parties possess an important internal structure, though the
Partido Acción Nacional has smaller number of members with higher party entry threshold (Langston
2007). In Brazil, according to Ames and Power (2007) only the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) has
significant party internal structure with high number of members comparable to the Mexican PRI. In
Chile, Angell (2007) observed rather centralist parties with high predominance of party elites based
in the capital Santiago de Chile in the decision-making process and a growing personalization and
campaign professionalization of party politics. The case of Costa Rica follows the European suite of
declining membership (Booth 2007) and debilitating of the traditional political parties. In Argentina,
there has been an upward trend since 1983 that reached around 30% of the registered electorate in
1999, but the chapter author argues that these numbers are truly fictitious (Szusterman 2007).
Lawson and Lanzaro (2010) have assembled a volume that includes chapters on political parties in
Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay. In general, there is rather little
information about the number and role of party members, though Nicolau (2010: 106-109) indicates
the numbers of Brazilian party members showing that, on the one hand, PT is not the only party with
significant number of party members, not even with the most numerous membership, and, on the
other hand, that these data should be taken with caution because the electoral legislation has high
requirements on the party member list and it is plausible to think that the majority of the militantes
joins the party only to meet the legal requirement and its further participation in the party internal
life is quite limited.
Finally, there are few articles that include Latin American countries in a comparative perspective
using public opinion data (Whiteley 2011) and a paper by Ponce (2013) focusing exclusively on the
region that tries to explain why people become party members in Latin America, using the data from
World Value Survey, Latinobarómetro and International Social Survey Programme. There has also
been several case studies dealing with the party membership in Mexico (Combes 2011, Muñoz
Armenta and Pulido Gómez 2010) and Brazil (Nicolau 2010; Sousa Braga et al. 2012; Ribeiro 2013),
arguably the two countries where the membership rates are among the highest in the region and
with the major importance of the militantes.
This brief overview of the existing literature shows that there is a great heterogeneity as to our
knowledge about the levels of party membership in Latin America (and its possible explications), the
requirements to become a member, the role of the militantes in the political parties, its rights and
7
duties. The following section show some numbers and tendencies that counters the one know from
Western European countries and further enhance the need to study not only party membership in
Latin America but also to put it in comparative perspective.
III. Party Membership Levels in Latin America
Indeed, one of the reasons why party membership is rather understudied in Latin America is the lack
of reliable data. There are basically two sources to estimate the number of militantes in Latin
America and both face important problems. On the one hand, official data as presented by electoral
organisms or political parties itself have been criticized for the lack of reliability due to inflated
numbers, including dead people, persons living abroad, double membership, deliberate manipulation
or simply the absence of the register. On the other hand, only recently there has been some
comparative data on the region from public opinion surveys11 that both do not cover all the countries
in the region and suffers from its own methodological problems like social desirability, current or
previous membership, the limited battery of questions related to the main topic and the culturally
conditioned understanding of party membership.
There is an agreement in the study of party membership in Europe that both types of data are
correlated, arguably because both tend to be inflated (Scarrow and Gezgor 2010; van Biezen et al.
2012) and thus it should be possible to use them interchangeably according to the research goal.
There has already been some preliminary work with the survey data in Latin America (Ponce 2013).
Here, I explore the official data in order to be able to compare the levels of party membership among
countries and individual parties and to offer a complementary vision of party membership in Latin
America and some possible hypothesis of its aggregate levels.
The official data is based on the information available on the websites of the electoral organism, key
informants and political parties’ website. Where the official data was not available directly, I turned
to the estimations in party leaders’ discourses or newspaper review, checking from at least two
different sources. Where divergent numbers were found, I took the lower number. The data is
presented disaggregated by political party, which permits comparing between parties across
11
This comes mainly from the World Values Survey (WVS) that included in its fifth wave (2005) Argentina,
Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Peru and Uruguay or from the International Social Survey
Programme (ISSP) Citizenship Study that was carried out in 2004 in Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay and
Venezuela. The most comprehensive public opinion study – Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) –
that covers all of the countries in the regions does not ask specifically for the party membership, though there
is a question whether the person attends party meetings.
8
countries, and as a percentage of all registered voters. I also compare it to some secondary data
present in the comparative literature and, where possible, sketch some preliminary tendencies.
Geographically, the data covers countries from both newer and older democracies, institutionalized
party systems and those that has suffered crisis of party system, federal and unitary countries and
strongly and weakly organized parties.
As was already mentioned, official party data show a great diversity in party membership levels in
Latin America. Concerning the data availability, there are basically three groups of countries. First,
countries where the information is published on the web pages of the electoral institutions. Second,
countries where there are rough estimates to be find in newspaper and website of the parties. Third,
in some cases no data is available at all (normally because not even the parties have the register),
though the figure of party member is present in the public discourse but it seem to be more in the
sense of voters or supporters.
Table I: National levels of party membership in Latin America
Country
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Costa Rica
Ecuador
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Paraguay
Peru
Dominican Republic1
Uruguay2
Venezuela3
Mean
Total party
membership (TPM)
8,099,186
1,093,776
15,300,000
816,014
N/A
N/A
3,293,483
N/A
N/A
N/A
9,508,782
N/A
1,467,428
3,834,672
1,184,277
3,000,000
410,000
7,250,000
Year
2012
2013
2012
2011
2014
2014
2013
2013
2014
2011-2013
2012
2009
TPM/Electorate (%)
28.08
21.28
10.88
6.09
28.36
11.96
59.71
109.06
5.94
46.13
15.99
38.35
31.82
1) Only PLD and PRD; 2) Only FA; 3) Only PSUV
Concerning the first group, the countries included are Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Panama, Peru. The
data show once more great heterogeneity going from 5.94% (Peru) to 59.71% (Panama) of
9
membership as a proportion of the registered electorate in the last presidential elections. The lowest
value is comparable to the mean of the same indicator in the European countries. However, the rest
of the values are higher than in Europe and reaching almost 30% in the case of Argentina. This data
are taken form the official electoral organisms websites, though it is generally hard to find them
there. Also, parties in these countries, as a norm, do not put the information on the internet.
The second group contains the rest of the countries for which the data is available (Table I): Bolivia,
Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Venezuela. Numerically, it is also
possible to appreciate great diversity across the countries and parties itself, as the values of the
indicator goes from 6.09% in Chile to 46.13% in Dominican Republic, where only the two most
important parties are included. In some cases, the data has been obtained from the local newspapers
(Bolivia, Chile), supposedly based on the official data from electoral institutions, in other from key
informant (Ecuador), and still in others the data is incomplete and available only for some parties in
the system (Dominican Republic, Uruguay, Venezuela), though reaching higher rates than in the
Western European countries. There also two extreme outliers. On the one hand, in Peru party
membership levels are quite low, though well documented by Jurado Nacional Electoral. These low
numbers could be explained by the “crisis of political parties” that the country experimented and the
consequent “democracy without parties” (Levitsky and Cameron 2003). On the other hand, “official
data” in Paraguay, as documented in the local newspaper, when summed up, returns more than
100%, which could mean either that the data are erroneous or that the double membership is
normal12.
The rest of the countries can be lumped into the third group. No data is available, nor can
estimations be found in the newspapers (except for some individual parties). This fact probably owes
to the non-existence of the party enrolment lists (Artiga 2014), scarce importance of the membership
for the parties (Romero Ballivián 2014), despite the existence of formal requirement of member list
when creating a new party, or the disconnection between the national and local levels within the
political parties (Botero and Alvira 2012) and the consequent lack of control over the membership
numbers at the party elite level (Giraldo 2007), as could be in the Colombian case.
In some countries, data is available for two (or more) points in time which makes it possible to sketch
some tendencies in the numbers of enrolment in the political parties. This is particularly the case of
Chile and Brazil. As to the former, the evolution in time between 2001 and 2011 shows that in
12
I thank Marcos Pérez Talia, a member of PLRA, for pointing this out.
10
aggregate term, the membership has risen from 567,101 to 816,014 party members13 which make for
an increase of 44%. As for the latter, in Brazil the aggregate data have grown only slightly from 9.7%
to 10.9% as a percentage of the total electorate14. For Argentina, the data is available for the two
traditional parties: Unión Cívica Radical and Partido Justicialista. On aggregate level, the number of
enrolled persons has increased between 1983 and 1999 from 2,966,472 to 8,137,809 (Szusterman
2007: 224)15 and maintained almost stable in 2012 (8,099,186).
Overall, the data presented here show that the levels of party membership revealed here are
significantly higher than in the European countries, which no doubt supports the necessity to further
look into the nature of party membership in Latin America, its reasons and the quality of the official
data. Though in Europe the survey data indicates generally higher values, in Latin America the
contrary seems to be the norm, as can be observed when compared the percentages shown here
and the number in offered by Ponce (2013) from the different public opinion surveys.
IV. Basic characteristics of party membership according to party statutes
This part of the paper explores some basic characteristics and importance of party membership as
expressed in the national legal framework (electoral law and/or political parties law) and party
statutes. In the first place, I examine what are the legal requisites concerning the number of
signatures/party members as a condition for creating a new party or sustaining a current one. In the
second place, I review some of the requirements, right and duties that parties stipulate for its (new)
members.
IV.1 Party members as an entry barrier for new parties and condition for survival
All legal electoral frameworks of the 18 Latin America countries included in this analysis present
some kind of requirements regarding the number of signatures of new members that have to be
presented when registering the political party with the official electoral organism. The barriers vary
importantly among the countries as do the margins with which the parties exceed it. Basically, the
thresholds are related either to the whole electorate (all registered voters) or the number of (valid)
votes cast in the last national (legislative or presidential) elections. To make the margins clearer, here
13
http://diario.latercera.com/2012/01/21/01/contenido/reportajes/25-97909-9-militancias-politicasaumentan-en-10-anos.shtml
14
The data is taken from Ribeiro (2013), based on the official information from the Supreme Electoral Court.
15
It is worth repeating that Szusterman (2007) does not consider these numbers real, because the register was
not purged since 1983, party de-affiliation is a complex process and parties itself prefer to be seen to have
more members than they have in reality and the high party membership numbers also serve during the internal
disputes.
11
I translate the thresholds to percentages of the whole electorate using the data from the last
elections in each country.
The countries in this study can be divided into two groups with higher and lower threshold and
subsequently taking into account the margins that principle parties in the systems reached with
respect to the threshold into four groups. This division can be located at 0.8% party membership
level as a proportion of the electorate. On the one hand, there are countries with rather low
requisite (0.8%<) that include Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Mexico,
Nicaragua, Paraguay and Uruguay (Table II). These countries contain both federal and unitary
countries, with diverse level of party system institutionalization (see Payne 2006). On the other hand,
in the rest of the states (Bolivia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Honduras, Panama, Dominican Republic,
Venezuela) the barrier is higher (>0.8%) and thus it should be more demanding for the parties to be
founded or to survive from one elections to the other.
Regarding the second criteria and considering the first group with smaller thresholds, in countries
like Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Paraguay and Uruguay, the principle parties seem to be on the save
side when getting over this barrier, although it is true that PAN in Mexico or PS and PRO in Argentina
have some difficulties to comply with the legal requirement. In the other countries of this group, e.g.
Chile, the parties struggle to surpass the threshold even if it is relatively low, with small differences
among the parties in the system. In this sense, Chile is a paradoxical case because it shows an
upward tendency in the party membership levels, but the parties are considered as one of the most
centralist ones in the region (Angell 2007), party identification is declining and some authors claim
that there is a process of party system deinstitutionalization and crisis of representation going on.
As to the second group with higher barriers, it is also possible to visualize two subgroups. First, in
countries like Panama, Dominican Republic and also Venezuela, the majority of the parties pass the
barrier with big margin. Second though, there are also countries like Bolivia, Ecuador or Peru where
the principal parties are edging the threshold with just small margins (some of them are even below
it) and a need to retain the old members or attract new ones.
12
Table II: Party/Electoral Law requisites for party membership and total party membership
Country
Year
Argentina
2012
PJ
UCR
Frente Grande
Partido Socialista
PRO
Bolivia
MAS
MSM
ADN
CN
PPB
UCS
Brazil
PMDB
PT
PSDB
DEM
PP
PDT
PTB
Chile
RN
PDC
UDI
PPD
PS
PC
PR
PH
Colombia
Costa Rica
Ecuador
PRIAN
AVANZA
CREO
Alianza PAIS
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
PRI
PRD
Party Law Requisite
0,42
2013
1,78
2012
0,35
2011
0,5
2014
0,15
0,1
1,5
2014
1,01
0,3
1,16
0,26
13
TPM/Electorate (%)
28,08
12,47
7,79
0,55
0,43
0,37
21,28
1,85
1,64
4,24
1,95
1,84
1,69
10,88
1,85
1,14
1
0,78
1
0,85
0,85
6,09
0,7
0,85
0,58
0,73
0,82
0,35
0,63
0,63
28,36
1,74
1,59
1,63
7,81
11,96
7,19
4,17
PAN
PVEM
PANAL
Movimiento Ciudadano
Nicaragua
Panamá
PRD
PP
CD
Paraguay
ANR-PC
PLRA
UNACE
Perú
AP
PAP
PNP
PPC
PP
República Dominicana
PLD
PRD
Uruguay
FA
Venezuela
PSUV
2013
0,03
2,66
2013
0,3
2014
0,84
2011-2013
1,4
2012
0,5
2009
0,8
0,55
0,63
0,63
0,48
59,71
20,61
9,75
20,68
109,06
58,58
31,5
12,7
5,94
0,91
1,13
0,57
1,29
0,85
46,13
33,83
12,3
15,99
15,99
38,35
38,35
IV.2 Party membership in the statutes: entry requirements, rights and duties
In general, the party statutes in Latin America are quite similar in its formal structure and also
regarding the requirements they put on the new members, the rights they concede them and the
duties they have to comply with16. Nevertheless, in this section I will briefly characterize them and
call the attention on some of the exceptions from the general tendencies. Certainly, this kind of
analysis does not permit to evaluate to what extent these formal aspect are reflected in the real
practice of each country but it allows for a first general approximation. Also, case studies or small N
comparative studies are needed to appreciate the differences between formal and informal
membership practice (see Freidenberg and Levitsky 2007).
16
This analysis is based on the review of party statutes of the parties included in the Table II, with the
exception of UDI and PR (both Chile) and Movimiento Ciudadano (Mexico) where the statutes were not found.
Also the party statutes of PJ and UCR (both Argentina) are very vague and refer to specification of the
provincial party statutes and thus leave the discretion to the party units on that level, though restricted by the
national party statues and political party law.
14
IV.2.1 Entry requirements
Political parties in Latin America do not differ significantly regarding what they require from the
possible new members. Normally, the person interested in entering a political party must have
citizens’ political rights, trust in democracy and other basic values, adopt party principles and
statutes, cannot be a member of any other party and join voluntarily the party. Apart from the
Brazilian case, where the process of entering is strict and thoroughly described (including expected
terms for each step) in the party statutes, in the majority of the countries, the enrolling process is
defined rather vaguely and includes the presentation of an application, inclusion in the register of the
local party unit and issuing of a party credential.
There are some exceptions to this general rule which consists basically of two additional requisites.
On the one hand, the entering member has to pass through a training course or period of
observation as a “pre-member” (normally between three and six months) as it is the case of Partido
Aprista Peruano and Partido Nacionalista Peruano (Peru), Partido Acción Nacional (Mexico), Partido
Democracia Cristiana (Chile) or Partido Revolucionario Dominicano (Dominican Republic). On the
other hand, some parties like Partido por la Democracia and Renovación Nacional (Chile) or
Asociación Nacional Republicana – Partido Colorado (Paraguay) require an “endorsement” or a
“sponsorship” from persons that are already members of the given political party17. In the extreme
case of Partido de la Revolución Democrática (Mexico), the party statutes also require to sign a
compromise to pay the party membership fee.
IV.2.2 Party members’ rights
Party members’ right presents maybe the most diverse aspect of the three elements reviewed in this
paper (entry requirements, rights and duties). There is a common ground that party members have
the right to receive ideological and academic training, participate in the party programme design,
express opinions and critiques about the party functioning, obtain counselling, but also, and more
importantly, to select party leaders and party candidates for the elections.
It is with regard to this second-to-last aspect where a divergence among and within the majority of
the countries lays. There is an important number of political parties that condition the voting right
for the party leaders post. This is related both to active and passive voting right, though it is more
common regarding the former. Thus parties like Partido Acción Nacional (Mexico), Partido do
Movimento Democrático Brasileiro and Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (Brazil), Partido por la
17
In the past, this was also the case of Partido Acción Nacional (Mexico).
15
Democracia (Chile), Perú Posible (Peru), Partido Popular (Panama) or Partido Liberal Radical
Auténtico (Paraguay) condition the possibility to candidate for a party leader posts with the length of
party membership. Normally, the more important the post, the more restrictive is the statute. The
required period varies from six months to three years. Another alternative used by some parties is to
demand higher instruction levels (Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela in Venezuela) or to show
(vaguely defined) merits (Unión Cívica Solidaridad in Bolivia or CREO in Ecuador).
Another way that Latin American parties use to express variation in right and duties of its members is
differentiated membership stipulated in the statutes18. Thus, the majority of the parties contemplate
the figure of “sympathizers” (simpatizantes)19 that feel close to the party programme, its principles
and may support the party during the campaigns, though they are not formally party members, as
the most basic way to collaborate with the party. The next step is to become affiliated
(afiliado/miembro), i.e., party member, either directly or after a period of pre-affiliation (Partido
Demócrata Cristiano in Chile or Acción Popular in Peru). For the most active members, some parties
reserve the term militant (militante), either formally according to the statutes (e.g., Partido Verde
Ecologista de México in Mexico or PLD and PRD in Dominican Republic) or informally for those who
decide to run political partisan career as in the case of Argentina20. The Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (Mexico) also distinguishes party cadres (cuadros) and party leaders (dirigente) as the
most advanced stage of party membership.
IV.2.3 Party members’ duties
Political parties in Latin American impose on its members also a series of duties. These normally
include assistance to party basic units meetings, collaboration with the party both in the times of
campaign as between elections, respect for and loyalty to the party programme, principles and
internal norms, promotion of the party doctrine, but also financial contribution. This last aspect
shows some dissimilarities among the parties in the region.
The majority of the parties requires their members to contribute with a monthly or annual fee, either
by obligation or voluntarily according to members’ financial possibilities (for example, the majority of
18
There is a great divergence in the use of the Spanish translation of party members, that normally has to do
with the level of implication in the party activities and the post held by the members. But there are also
difference in the meaning of the same word among the countries. Normally, in the party statutes party
members are referred to as miembros de partido or afiliados. Often, the word adherente (adherent) is used in
the same meaning. In the public discourse (mass media) is used the word militante (militant) for all the
categories discussed in this paper without any distinction.
19
Also called “activist” (activistas) or “allies” (aliados).
20
I thank Mara Pegoraro for this point.
16
the Bolivian parties). There is also a small minority of political parties that do not demand to pay a
member fee or do not include it formally in the statutes. This last group includes parties like Partido
Comunista (Chile), PRO and Frente Grande (Argentina), Demócratas (Brazil) or Partido Popular
(Perú)21. Some of the parties like PRD (Mexico) or Partido dos Trabalhadores (Brazil) include this
condition directly in the party membership requisites. Complementary, various parties (Partido
Popular Cristiano in Peru, Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro in Brazil) require its members who have
become elected on their candidate lists to, for example, national legislative body to contribute more
financially to the political party.
V. ¿Why militantes?: Some possible hypothesis of party membership levels in Latin America
The Latin American party membership panorama presents quite heterogeneous and complex picture
and the data available makes it impossible to offer plausible and convincing explanation about the
varying levels of party enrolment and to be sure that the data reflect, to a certain point, the political
reality of the countries in question. Still, I will try to outline some of the possible hypothesis for the
party membership levels in the region.
V.1 Data reliability and historical trajectories
The first plausible question when comparing the data for the Latin American countries with its
European counterparts, more so with CEE countries, is whether the data is reliable. The obvious
answer would be no, but it is only a part of the answer. Indeed, in cases like Paraguay where the total
of party member sums up more than 100% of the electorate, there certainly is a problem with the
quality of the data. On the one hand, this can owe to the inflated data by the parties itself but more
probably due to double membership (mostly in ANR-PC and PLRA) and the need to purge the party
members register from dead people or persons who left the country. In the same way, the numbers
for Argentina can be inflated as well as the party members register was designed in 1983 when the
country returned to democracy and it was the momentum of social mobilization and enthusiasm;
from then until today, the register has not been purged and the de-affiliation is quite complicated
(Szusterman 2007)22.
21
For the purposes of this text only the statutes of Frente Amplio (Uruguay), a coalition party, but not the
statutes of the respective parties that conform it. The FA document does not indicate anything about financial
contribution, though it is probable that some fees are required by the member parties (sectores).
22
According to the party statutes review, clear conditions for ending party membership are not the norm in the
region but are to be found in around one third of the party statutes. In the rest of the party documents, no
special mention is present.
17
On the other hand, ANR-PC, PLRA, PJ, UCR, but also parties like PRI (Mexico) or PAP (Peru) are among
the most traditional ones, with long electoral history and a culture of membership23. Moreover, in
the case of PRI, ANR-PC, but also Partido Revolucionario Democrático (Panama), these were for a
long time in the history of its countries hegemonic, regime parties that has not only co-opted the
political system but also permeated the social sphere. Finally, should the data be inflated,
deliberately or not, it is reasonable to ask why the parties would that on such a scale, when data
presented in this paper comes from the official source, which would mean that there is certain
control over its veracity. This could be due to legitimacy in the society, internal disputes or to show
(artificially) its strength.
V.2 Territorial presence, conditions for local party units and internal party disputes
Some of the countries with highest party membership levels are federal with, high levels of
decentralization and a paramount need of the presence in the territory. Thus, the control of the
territory and the possibility to conquest new territory electorally would be the explication in
countries like Argentina, Brazil or Mexico24. Furthermore, Latin American parties are prone to
internal disputes and fragmentation. Higher number of militantes would thus be the best strategy to
dominate the party and strengthen its position. This tendency would be more pronounced in federal
setting, with high levels of decentralization, big parties and powerful intermediate political
leaderships. Some of the parties, like PRD (Mexico), even recognize the right of its members to form
internal factions in party statutes.
V.3 Candidate selection
Other possible explication would be the need of militantes in the candidate selections and the
incentive they have to influence in its selection. In Latin America, the general trend in the recent
years has been towards a major opening of political parties as a solution to a growing distrust in
political parties. Nevertheless, the panorama still presents some differences among the countries.
According to Freidenberg (2014), who reviewed the existing legislation and the presidential selection
procedure in the region in the last 25 years, in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Guatemala, there was no
selection processes at all25. In Paraguay, Panama, Peru and Dominican Republic, the principal parties
held closed internal elections. In Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Honduras and Uruguay, the main
23
According to Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) that carries out public opinion survey in the
Americas region, Dominican Republic (23.8%), Paraguay (11.1%) and Panama (8.1%) (from the countries
analyzed in this paper) are the leading countries in the citizens’ participation in political party meetings (see
Corral 2009), which, at least in the case of Dominican Republic, lends further support to the reliability of the
official information presented here.
24
See for example Souza Braga et al. (2012) or Montero (2010) for this point in the Brazilian case.
25
In Venezuela, chavismo never held internal presidential candidate selections.
18
parties organized open candidate selection for all registered citizens. In this context, Mexico is a
border case with PRI organizing open selection process in 1999 and 2005 but not in 2011, PAN
internal closed selection in all opportunities and PRD deciding the candidate through the party
convention.
Although the tendency is not clear, it is possible to apprehend that in Panama, Paraguay, Dominican
Republic and partially Mexico, the parties has organized a closed selection only for its party
members. That would point to an important role of the militantes in deciding who is going to be the
party presidential candidate, the most powerful post in the political system. Thus, parties – main
competitors – have further incentives to summon party members in order to have chances in the
internal disputes when there is more than one competitive candidate. And also the parties would see
its position strengthened. In this context, the Peruvian case is rather odd as it seems to be the case
with lowest enrolment levels among the countries studied here. Nevertheless, this could be
explained by the crisis that the Peruvian political parties experimented and the concomitant crisis of
representation in the 1990s and lost its roots in the society and led some scholars to qualify Peru as a
“democracy without parties” (Levitsky and Cameron 2003).
V.4 Intraparty democracy
The Latin American Party Elites Project (PELA)26, conducted by the University of Salamanca team for
each new legislature, gathers the data from interviews with party elites (national
deputies/asambleístas). One of the questions asked relates to the intraparty democracy and the
decision making process. Specifically, the party deputies are asked: “In my party the political
decisions are made by the party elite. The party members are not taken into account”27 and the
answer goes from 1 (absolutely disagree) to 5 (absolutely agree).
Considering the parties analysed here, the answers range from 1,67 in the case of PT (Brazil), 1,89 of
Partido Popular Cristiano (Perú) to 4,14 of Partido Trabalhista Brasileiro (Brazil) and 4,25 of Partido
Socialista (Chile). These results show that the leftist parties are not the most inclusive, as both PTB
and PS are rather controlled by party elites. Furthermore, some of the parties with highest numbers
of party members like PRI (Mexico), PRIAN (Ecuador), PSDB (Brazil) or the two Dominican and all
Chilean parties are among the most controlled by the elites, as perceived by them.
26
http://americo.usal.es/oir/elites/
In Spanish: “En mi partido las decisiones políticas se toman en la cúpula. Las bases no pueden hacer oír su
voz”.
27
19
V.5 Party strategies and party funding
Some of the parties included in this paper have recently launched deliberate campaigns to enrol
more new members and thus strengthen its position vis-à-vis its competitors. The aims are quite
eloquent. For example, PRI (Mexico), already the Mexican party with the highest number of
militantes, seeks to expand its number to 10 million as of the next mid-term elections in 2015 and
thus secure a clear triumph28. For its part, Bolivian MAS want to celebrate its 19th anniversary
reaching 1 million members by 201429. Other cases would include PSUV (Venezuela)30 or Cambio
Democrático31 (Panama) that has employed similar strategies.
These parties seek different goals. First and most obvious, to conquest more militantes, avoid any
problems with the legal barrier and increase its chances to win the elections with the best possible
result. Second, “show its muscles”, obtain popular legitimacy, position themselves in the society and
show its strength to its adversaries. In this vein, Cambio Democrático, a relatively new party founded
at the end of 1990s and also the party of the sitting president of Panama, Ricardo Martinelli, has
already overtaken the Partido Revolucionario Democrático, traditionally the strongest party in the
system, in the number of party members. Third, they reinforce its mobilization capacity and enhance
its possibilities to capture new members with the multiplicative effect, like in the case of PSUV.
Fourth, some parties search for new source of funding through membership registration fees. This is
especially true in the cases where no public funding is stipulated, like in the case of Bolivia32 and
Venezuela (Joignant 2013). In Brazil, PT has been claimed to be the only party that has important
revenues from membership dues, alternative to public funding (see Nicolau 2010, Ames and Power
2011; Riberio 2013).
V.6 Political clientelism and patronage
The last possible factor that can influence in the levels of party membership review here is the
patronage, defined as a “selective distribution of public goods to followers (‘clients’)” and in practical
realm observed as a “distribution of favours in the form of jobs in public agencies” (Gordin 2006: 7-8)
has been criticized to be one of the main reasons for joining a political party in Latin America in
28
http://www.milenio.com/politica/PRI-va-millones-afiliados_0_270572971.html
29
http://www.erbol.com.bo/noticia/politica/28032014/mas_celebrara_19_aniversario_con_un_millon_de_milita
ntes
30
In October 2012, before the regional elections PSUV started a campaign 1x10 that aimed to enrol 10 new
party members for one militante (see: http://www.telesurtv.net/articulos/2012/10/17/psuv-asegura-queestrategia-electoral-en-comicios-regionales-sera-similar-a-las-presidencial-6445.html)
31
http://tvn-2.com/noticias/noticias_detalle.asp?id=73917
32
http://la-razon.com/nacional/Bs-millones-inscripcion-reinscripcion-militantes-electoral_0_1992400806.html
20
general, but also recently in the countries with high levels of party membership like Panama33 or
Brazil.
The case of Brazil is especially illustrative as some empirical data are available. As Ribeiro (2013: 612)
puts it: “El Estado también ofrece amplios espacios en la burocracia para la manutención y formación
de militantes y apoyadores de los partidos y para la obtención de otros recursos organizativos
importantes mediante mecanismos de patronazgo. El gobierno federal dispone de aproximadamente
21 mil cargos de libre nombramiento por todo el país, siendo que el 14% estaban ocupados por
afiliados de los partidos en 2010 (Praça, Freitas y Hoepers, 2012). Datos recientemente recogidos
registran 105 mil posiciones de libre nombramiento en los 27 gobiernos estaduales y alrededor de
500 mil en los ayuntamientos locales34. La distribución de esos cargos es la principal recompensa que
los partidos y sus bancadas reciben por su apoyo legislativo al alcalde, gobernador o presidente “
VI. Preliminary conclusions
This paper aimed to contribute to the current knowledge about party membership in Latin America
that is rather limited because this topic is one of the least studied in the region. This is surprising
given that the aggregate numbers of militantes in Latin America are higher than in Europe ans much
higher than in the new CEE democracies. In this paper, I argue that the relatively high numbers owe
to a combination of historical, institutional and party strategy reasons. Furthermore, I contend that
there is a great heterogeneity among the Latin American countries and that the explication of the
levels of party enrolment must take into account national idiosyncrasies rather than some general
region-wide explication.
The historical factors help to explain higher levels of party membership in traditional or ex-regime
parties like in Mexico, Paraguay, Argentina, Peru or even Panama. The institutional variables seem to
lend some explanatory power in countries like Bolivia or Ecuador that went through the crisis of
representation and quasi-disappearance of the traditional parties in those countries. Both countries
legal frameworks stipulate relatively high threshold (1.78% and 1.5% of the electorate, respectively)
for the parties renovation which by definition obliges the parties that want to compete to actively
33
See this note on the increasing number of militantes as a “political clientelism”: http://tvn2.com/noticias/noticias_detalle.asp?id=73917
34
Datos estaduales y locales recogidos por el Instituto Brasileño de Geografía y Estadística (IBGE) y presentados
en: “Governadores controlam máquina de 105 mil cargos sem concurso público”. Jornal O Estado de São Paulo,
31 de marzo de 2013. “Prefeituras do país criam 64 mil cargos para nomeação política em quatro anos”. Jornal
O Estado de São Paulo, 14 de julio de 2013.
21
search for new militantes. The party-centred variables underscore the recent deliberate efforts of
some parties like PRI (Mexico), MAS (Bolivia), PSUV (Venezuela) or Cambio Democrático (Panama) to
attract new militantes and thus expand its party member base.
Other variables like party entry requirements, members’ duties and rights, candidate selection
process or intraparty democracy seem to explain less. Party statute differs concerning aspects like
entry conditions, differentiated possibilities to occupy party leadership posts or the payment of
membership fee, but in general the statutes are rather uniform and the exceptions found do no
coincide in any discernible pattern with the aggregate membership levels. As to the candidate
selection this is more and more open and militantes are losing its privileged position, with the
exception of Panama, Dominican Republic and Paraguay. Regarding the intraparty democracy, for the
limited sample that the data are available there are again some exceptions with relatively important
perceived role of the militantes by the party elite in the party decision process but not strong enough
to possibly explain the levels of enrolment.
Indeed, this exploratory paper that makes use of official data as presented by electoral organism or
mass media does not allow to search for the reason of party membership on individual level and also
raises suspects about the veracity of the data presented in this paper. The situation of PAN (Mexico)
can be the case in point. The party purged its party members register in the last two years and the
number of militantes has descended in about 70%35. This caused a big surprise and indignation as
nobody expected it and there was a general trust in the official party data. Thus, future investigations
should focus on the veracity of the data and the role of electoral organism in confirming the
registers. More available public opinion survey data should allow us to know more about the
motivations that the Latin American militantes have to join the parties. Certainly, more fieldwork is
also necessary with the political parties to evaluate the role of the party members, the way they keep
the party member lists and the understanding they give to the militancia in different countries.
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