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A Multilevel Model of Ideological Congruence in Latin America

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 August 2021

Juan Antonio Rodríguez-Zepeda Open the ORCID record for Juan Antonio Rodríguez-Zepeda [Opens in a new window]  and
Patricia Otero-Felipe Open the ORCID record for Patricia Otero-Felipe [Opens in a new window]
Juan Antonio Rodríguez-Zepeda
Affiliation:
Juan Antonio Rodríguez-Zepeda is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain. jarzepeda@ubu.es.
Patricia Otero-Felipe
Affiliation:
Patricia Otero-Felipe is a professor of political science at the University of Burgos, Burgos, Spain. potero@ubu.es.
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Abstract

What explains ideological congruence between citizens and political parties? Although the literature on congruence has recently provided some answers to this question, most of these works have focused on the effect of systemic and partisan factors. They have paid less attention to the effect of people’s characteristics on ideological congruence, which is built by the interaction between citizens’ positions on public issues and those of the political parties that represent them. Our general research hypothesis is that party-voter congruence is stronger when parties reduce the uncertainty about their ideological positions and citizens can understand these signals better. Analysis of Latin American data supports this hypothesis, showing that people’s cognitive ability, specifically education and political knowledge, has a positive effect on party-voter ideological congruence. Moreover, this relationship is moderated by parties’ attributes, such as ideological ambiguity and radicalism.

Keywords

congruenceideologyuncertaintyvoterspartiesLatin America
Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Politics and Society , Volume 63 , Special Issue 3: The Grassroots Right in Latin America , August 2021 , pp. 119 - 145
Copyright
© The Authors 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the University of Miami

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Footnotes

The authors declare that they do not have any conflict of interest.

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