Middlebrook Revisited: Conservative Parties and Political Representation in Latin America
摘要
Kevin Middlebrook’s Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America is an influential work in the comparative study of Latin American political parties. Of the key issues Middlebrook raised in the book, I would like to focus on political representation in this chapter. First, although socioeconomic cleavages supposedly define core constituencies of conservative parties, are social classes still defining features for conservative supporters? If so, what kind of issues do they weigh as most important for their countries? Second, do conservative politicians share similar issue stances, or do they stand and act for someone else? If conservative parties, Middlebrook stressed, are important for the long-term representation of elite interests, it should be expected that the political preferences and/or issue stances of conservative politicians are congruent to those from upper socioeconomic strata. I will test this hypothesis with a focus on five conservative parties that Middlebrook also discussed and use PELA and LAPOP surveys to measure the focus of representation and issue congruence. The empirical analysis will reveal that the focus of representation on either local or national interests varies significantly between conservative parties, and such a variation affects the degree of issue congruence in turn.