This chapter empirically tests the theory about the micro-foundations of electoral support for new parties. It analyzes how individual voters respond to appeals based on different mobilization strategies in discrete choice experiments conducted in Bolivia and Ecuador. These experiments present voters with campaign posters that closely resemble real-world posters; the results illustrate that organizational endorsements are very effective at mobilizing electoral support, especially for new parties. Such endorsements are also effective across several different types of organizations and can sway organization members as well as people in their wider social networks. Furthermore, endorsements can influence voters even when they provide no direct information about policy platforms; unlike organization members, sympathetic nonmembers do not follow the endorsements. It also shows that endorsements can even overcome ethnic cleavages and foster electoral support when candidates’ policy positions are at odds with voters’ preferences.

This chapter further tests the argument about how the experiences during a party’s founding moments shape which mobilization strategies the party adopts through a paired comparison with a new party that did not experience moments of solidarity with its organizational allies. Alianza PAIS was founded in Ecuador during a period of mass mobilization similar to the one in Bolivia and initially could rely on a broad coalition of powerful societal organizations – representing sectors similar to those in the founding coalition of the MAS. However, as this chapter shows, drawing on extensive interviews with early party leaders and organizational representatives, Alianza PAIS leaders had little trust in their organizational allies due to a lack of experience during the party’s founding moments. This made them hesitant to adopt internal rules and mechanisms that would institutionalize their tie with their organizational allies. Instead, ties remained instrumental and largely broke down when policy disagreements between the party leadership and its organizational allies arose. As a result, Alianza PAIS could not rely on organizationally mediated appeals and had to primarily use direct appeals.

This chapter explores the resulting party identification in the three cases. Drawing on original and existing survey data, it shows that membership in organizations that regularly support a new party is strongly associated with whether a voter develops an attachment to the party. Further analysis of the poster experiments suggests that the frequency of attending organization meetings is associated with the robustness of the attachment. Additional analyses of the natural experiment reveal that repeated organizational expressions of support over multiple years help new parties gain new followers. It then compares and contrasts this organizationally mediated path to partisanship (organizational cultivation), which can account for the development of robust partisan attachments to the MAS and MORENA, with an alternative path to partisanship that can yield party identification even for parties without organically linked organizational allies. In the case of Alianza PAIS, which could not rely on organizational cultivation through organically linked organizations, partisan attachments have developed in direct response to voters’ evaluations of the party’s performance.

Launched as a leftist vehicle for the presidential candidacy of Rafael Correa, the Alianza País (AP) dominated Ecuador’s electoral politics for a decade. Electoral success, however, was never paired with a democratically minded project of party building. Wielding expansive executive powers as president from 2007 to 2017, Correa consolidated his personal control over the AP and set the country on a course of democratic backsliding. Horizontal coordination among elites and operatives inside the party was enforced through a top-down command structure. Decisions about messaging, candidates, and discipline were tightly controlled by Correa and his inner circle of hand-picked loyalists. Eschewing grassroots participation in favor of technocratic governance, Correa systematically undercut independent groups in civil society and used executive-branch resources to subsidize select groups and maintain electoral support. For the most part, the AP was consigned to the sidelines, purposefully diminished by its leader. While mobilizing effectively for elections, the AP failed to develop as a conduit for citizen participation and interest representation. Rather than acting as a democratizing agent of change, the AP evolved into a caudillista-style vehicle reminiscent of personalistic parties in the country’s past.