Abstract
The chapter explores coalition-building dynamics in Argentina from 1983 to 2015. Argentine has not a large tradition in government coalitions on federal level, but since 1995 there is an important increase of electoral coalitions in both national and subnational level. This phenomenon has recently called the attention of the literature. Which variables explain the growth of electoral coalitions in Argentina? What are the main incentives that lead parties to form coalitions? Which degree of coalition congruence is among the different electoral levels? How coalition congruence is related to the process of increased federalization of the Argentine party system? To address these questions, this chapter describes and compares the electoral alliances that have run for executive and legislative positions at national and subnational levels in the 24 Argentine provinces between 1983 and 2015. This chapter is based on 1136 observation of coalition-building, candidate selection and electoral results in each of the 24 Argentine provinces since 1983 for all the 9 presidential races, 17 national deputies’ elections, 9 rounds of provincial executive and legislative elections. I excluded municipal positions and the election of national senators. I argue that coalitions replace parties in organizing the electoral competition, given the organizational transformations they went through in the last two decades.
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Notes
- 1.
Until 1994 Argentine president had been elected by Electoral College.
- 2.
This system also allows introducing a threshold for parties that seek running for national positions: they have get at least 1.5% of the votes in the PASO elections.
- 3.
Because of the hybrid figure of “district party”: parties which are located in one province but can run for national positions like deputies or senators.
- 4.
Meaning, those systems where “… parties obtain similar vote shares in elections of different levels in each district, but that not compete in all districts, or run under different coalitions or get different vote share in each district… There is geographic discontinuity with continuity between levels of government” (Leiras 2010: 213).
- 5.
The six provinces selected as less competitive are Formosa, La Rioja, Neuquén, San Luis, Santiago del Estero and Santa Cruz. In five of these provinces, it never changed the ruling party. In four of them, the incumbent party won by an average difference of 30%, and in five of these provinces the ENEP for Governor is close to a two-party system. Other provinces have similar values in some of these criteria and could be included in this sample, but I have selected these cases to show extreme values in the three criteria combined. In the opposite situation I have selected the Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego, Córdoba, Mendoza, Río Negro and Santa Fe. In five of these cases, the average governorship ENEP is located near to a three-party system. Four of these provinces show high levels of competitiveness: in 9 elections for Governor, the average difference between the winning party and the main contender has been less than 10% points; while the ruling party has changed at least twice in three of these provinces.
- 6.
Clerici (2014) distinguish two possible dimensions of horizontal congruence. This chapter considers only the so called “horizontal categorical” (horizontal by category). The so called “horitonzal-distrital” (horizontal by district) compares the coalitions formed for the same category of positions (national deputies, for example) in the 24 districts of Argentine federation.
- 7.
Fernando de la Rua was elected President in 1999, within an alliance between UCR and FREPASO. The combination of economic crisis (crisis of payments for services of external debt and a 4-years recession), social crisis (high rates of poverty and unemployment) and political crisis (the breakdown of the coalition in 2000, parliamentary minority and a rapid loss of popularity among public opinion, which was expressed in the 2001 elections) led to a cycle of intense protests, which forced his resignation on December 20, 2001. Until Nestor Kirchner administration, in 2003, Argentina experienced a period of deep political instability, with the anticipated resignation of five interim Presidents.
- 8.
This is what Borges et al. (2017) have called “horizontal nationalization”.
- 9.
As a national party, PRO didn’t run in 2007 and 2011 presidential races. In the districts where PRO runs for national and subnational seats, the share of horizontal congruent strategies is close to zero. In addition, in all provinces (except for de City of Buenos Aires) PRO changed its coalition strategy at least once.
- 10.
There is not congruent impact if subnational elections are concurrent with presidential race (as it shows in Fig. 7).
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Mauro, S. (2018). Coalition Politics in a Federalized Party System: The Case of Argentina. In: Albala, A., Reniu, J. (eds) Coalition Politics and Federalism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75100-9_6
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