Dinâmicas de surgimento de novos partidos na América do Sul (1979-2015)

Abstract

The opening of the 1980s was characterized by the exhaustion of authoritarian regimes in South America. The long transition process that some countries have undergone, or the abrupt institutional rupture of others countries, marked the return of the parties to political arena. Thenceforth, as several authors have pointed out, there has been the emergence of new political actors or transformations of previously consolidated political parties. In this work, we investigate the dynamics of the emergence of new parties in the subcontinent. We thought these parties as organizations that participated for the first time in general elections. We take account of the general elections (91) carried out in the period from 1979 to 2015 through secondary (scholar’s works) and primary sources (databases of the respective courts elections), observing the variations in the number of new parties that arose in each election. The literature concerned with the emergence of new parties in consolidated or emerging democracies points out different variables that influence in the genesis of new organizations, as political or social crises, political actors and / or institutional incentives. In our case, through multivariate statistical analysis, we seek to understand which are the variables that have the greatest impact on the emergence of new parties. The outcomes indicate that there are significant differences between countries, with Andean countries being much more prone to the emergence of new parties due to specific constitutional changes. Social causes, such as high unemployment and low economic growth, were also significant in explaining why in some contexts appeared more new parties than in others.

Keywords:
New Political Parties; South America; Comparison; Elections