3 - Building a Party Network: Political, Partisan, and Social Networks in Argentina

Summary

Let me tell you: I have a cousin, a young man who didn't take any particular interest in politics. I went to him and said: “Tommy I'm going to be a politician, and I want to get a followin’; can I count on you?” He said: “Sure, George.” That's how I started in business. I got a marketable commodity – one vote.

George Plunkitt (Riordon 1995: 8–9)

George Washington Plunkitt, a long-time state senator from New York's Fifteenth Assembly District and Tammany Hall boss for forty years, knew how to build and run a political machine. His strategies for gaining long-lasting success in politics are followed today in old and new democracies alike. Still, politicians around the world who share Plunkitt's ambitions have not always been successful in their attempts to mobilize voters. In Argentina, for instance, some party brokers are incapable of garnering much support beyond that of their family and friends (and in some cases not even that), whereas others manage to get the support of their entire neighborhood.

A party broker's success in mobilizing voters is a combination of what he or she has to offer, what voters need, and the alternatives that voters have to get their problems solved without the aid of the broker. In my investigation, I chose to focus on candidates who, like Plunkitt, are able to build a party network by mobilizing voters in poor neighborhoods and found that candidates’ decisions to use clientelism in order to mobilize voters vary based on their capacity and preference to use this strategy. My study of candidates who have the capacity and preference to use clientelism explains the degrees to which they are able to build a party network.

I argue that the existing opportunities for candidates at the time of mobilization are crucial to explaining (a) candidates’ capacities to effectively use clientelism and (b) their preferences to use these strategies as a means of mobilizing voters.