Timing, sequences and new party institutionalization in South America

While party system institutionalization is widely addressed in the literature, the conditions of institutionalization on the level of individual parties are still insufficiently explored, especially for Latin America. The region provides a broad variety of new parties, whose divergent developments cannot be explained by structural or institutional factors. Recently, a range of genetic explanations has been proposed, which attribute new party institutionalization to their conditions of emergence. These accounts, however, leave questions about later stages of party institutionalization open. We propose a more comprehensive approach, integrating different dimensions and covering the whole path of new party institutionalization. We start from the proposition that in the process of party development, tensions and contradictions arise between internal, organizational consolidation on the one hand and external relations to voters and competitors, on the other, which make it difficult to institutionalize in both dimensions at the same time. We, therefore, argue that new parties are only able to institutionalize successfully when institutionalization proceeds in a sequential way, with internal institutionalization preceding electoral rise and external institutionalization. We substantiate our supposition by matching the expected sequential pattern of institutionalization to four empirical cases, the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT), the Uruguayan Broad Front (FA), the Argentine FREPASO and the Venezuelan Causa R. Based on these cases we will show that successful parties indeed follow this script, while new party failure can be attributed to their lack of institutionalized internal structures in the moment of electoral rise.