I’ve just uploaded the paper I’ll be presenting at the APSA meeting at the end of August: “Bolivia’s Party System after October 2003: Where Did all the Politicians Go?”
It’s a little rough still, since it’s based on some very preliminary & incomplete data collection. It’s part of a larger three-year project I’ll be working on as part of an NSF-funded project w/ (among others) Matt Shugart, Ellis Krauss, and Robert Pekkanen.
Basically, it looks at incumbent reelection in Bolivia, specifically to see whether there is evidence for a “realignment” between “anti-system” forces behind MAS & “establishment” political forces behind PODEMOS. Interestingly, there are relatively few incumbents returned (relative to previous elections). This may seem intuitive, but not when one considers that comparatively few MAS legislators elected in 2002 returned in 2005. It raises some interesting questions I’d like to explore further: Why hasn’t MAS retained more of its personnel? Why didn’t the MAS 2005 electoral lists include other prominent figures from the “Gas War” or veterans of the katarista indigenous movement?
Do you the two main parties developing the strategies necessary to compete for the swing voter across the country, instead of simply using get out the vote techniques?
I'm not exactly sure what you're asking here. But remember that Bolivia's electoral system is not like the US, it is a mixed-member proportional system (which like PR encourages multiple parties, but also encourages highly localized campaigns for the single-seat contests). Also, the virtual two-party system at the national level is an anomaly, and even in 2005 there were *different* party systems at the local level. There are more incentives for parties to campaign *away* from median voters, which I've described in an earlier paper.
Could you give me a link to that paper?
I was thinking that the switch to a mixed proportional system from a purely proportional system may have exaggerated the polarization and created a stronger tenancy for 2 main parties at a national level. Could the virtual two party system be less of a anomaly than under the old system?
Also, with less centralization it seems possible that there could be a different dynamic at the national level than local? i.e. more variation locally less nationally?
Sorry it took so long, I was traveling & w/o internet access. Here is a link to the 2005 conference paper version:
http://users.dickinson.edu/~centellm/papers/mpsa2005.pdf
I've since revised it, of course. But I haven't placed the more recent manuscript draft (which I just sent to a journal for potential publication).
Bottom line: I found not necessarily an incentive for a two-party system (and certainly not at the national level), but rather that MMP provided incentive for parties to become regionalized parties. By 2002 you saw different party systems in different departments.