Political Representation, Parties and Presidents Survey


  • PREPPS measures policy positioning and democratic linkage mechanisms in Latin American presidential systems, using expert surveys. Our 2018/2019 Latin American expert survey data allows for a comprehensive comparative assessment of policy dimensions for a large number of parties and presidents across 18 Latin American countries in conjunction with mechanisms of accountability and modes of competition.
    IE Universiry, University of Conneticut, GIGA, 2017-2019


    Team

    Nina Wiesehomeier

    Dr. Matthew Singer

    University of Conneticut



    Forschungsfragen

    How do political parties and presidents in Latin America position themselves on different policy issues? Which political actors support mechanisms of direct democracy, which don’t? Does the degree of populist rhetoric used by political actors correlate systematically with their policy platforms, their organizational style, and their support for different modes of representation?

    Beitrag zu internationaler Forschung

    Among other research endeavors within this project, Saskia Ruth-Lovell investigates the relation between political actors’ degree of populism and their support for direct democratic mechanisms in collaboration with Nina Wiesehomeier (IE University) and Yanina Welp (University of Zurich). The success of populist actors is often interpreted as a direct response to a larger crisis of representative democracy, particularly to the perceived delegitimatization of representative institutions. Due to the dualistic nature of populist discourse – centering on the “pure” people versus a “corrupt” elite that is removed from the people – populism appears to have a quasi-natural affinity to mechanisms of direct democracy. Calls for increased direct citizen control and engagement in political decision making processes, in other words an increase in participation, are not confined to populist actors, however. Yet, populists and non-populists may differ regarding the particular types of mechanisms of direct democracy they favor. Using the expert survey data of the Political Representation, Parties, and Presidents Survey (PREPPS), we map the preferences of 156 political parties and 18 presidents in 18 Latin American countries for tools that enable citizens to decide on issues put before them by the political elite versus those that empower citizens to shape the agenda themselves, such as the recall of a mandate or the call for referendums via signature collection. We contrast these preferences not only with the degree of populism these actors espouse, but also with their reliance on charismatic leadership as a means of voter-linkage vis-à-vis policy driven linkages.

    Forschungsdesign und Methoden

    PREPPS expands and combines previous efforts of measuring policy positioning (Wiesehomeier and Benoit, 2009) and democratic linkage mechanisms (Kitschelt 2013) in Latin American presidential systems using expert surveys. Questions on policy positions include the general left-right dimension, the economic left-right, social policies, redistribution, foreign policy, and environmental policy, among others. Furthermore the project collects information on conditional exchange, party organization, and factions.

    Vorläufige Ergebnisse

    Our 2018/2019 Latin American expert survey data allows for a comprehensive comparative assessment of policy dimensions for a large number of parties and presidents across 18 Latin American countries in conjunction with mechanisms of accountability and modes of competition. The first release of this data can be found at the Harvard Dataverse.


    Datensatz | 2019

    Political Representation, Executives, and Political Parties Survey: Data from Expert Surveys in 18 Latin American Countries, 2018-2019. PREPPS Latam V1

    Data from an expert survey on policy positioning and linkage mechanisms in 18 Latin American countries. Please see Conditions & Codebook for more details

    10.7910/DVN/Z5DESA

    Nina Wiesehomeier

    Dr. Matthew Singer

    Sammelband | Rowman & Littlefield | 10.2019

    Clientelism and Democratic Representation in Comparative Perspective

    Maria Spiroca

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