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5 - The Empirical Dynamics of Elite Activism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 July 2009
Summary
During long decades of PRI dominance, opposition parties labored and failed to generate substantial electoral support. They were outspent by an incumbent with a virtually bottomless war chest derived largely from public funds, their programmatic appeals were outflanked by the PRI's vote buying machine, and they were occasionally repressed by a regime that was not unwilling to use threats and violence as a last resort. These mechanisms minimized opposition parties' electoral fortunes because they affected the type of party elites they were able to attract. The PRI's advantages discouraged all but the most anti-status quo citizens from serving as candidates and activists in the opposition. These comparatively extremist party elites endorsed building niche parties that appealed to smaller electoral constituencies. It was only as economic restructuring reduced the incumbent's resource advantages and leveled the partisan playing field that moderates who supported centrist catchall strategies were willing to join the opposition.
This chapter tests the predictions about recruitment dynamics that were generated from the formal model of elite activist affiliation developed in Chapter 4. Using individual-level data from the Mexico Party Personnel Surveys, I demonstrate that opposition party elites' policy extremism with respect to the status quo increases with the dominant party's resource advantages and use of repression. However, office-seekers and message-seekers respond differently to changes in the political environment. Office-seekers who join when the probability of opposition victory is low will be more extreme than message-seekers who join at the same time.
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- Why Dominant Parties LoseMexico's Democratization in Comparative Perspective, pp. 139 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007