The Causes of the Electoral (In)Stability of Incumbents in Hybrid Regimes in Latin America 1990-2014
The Causes of the Electoral (In)Stability of Incumbents in Hybrid Regimes in Latin America 1990-2014

Summary/Abstract: The research on hybrid regimes has advanced in the recent years but there is still a gap with respect to a question of their (in)stability. There are researchers asserting that hybrid regimes are only a transitional regime type while others insist on their stable (persisting) character. The aim of this article was to explore the causes of the incumbents' electoral (in)stability in hybrid regimes in Latin America. For that purpose, an instructive comparison of 18 cases of national presidential elections – eleven of incumbent victory and seven that led to a victory of the opposition - was carried out in the years between 1990 and 2014. The text assessed the validity of the two main sets of hypotheses. The first highlighted the strategy on the part of the opposition forces and the second referred to the context in which the opposition political forces operate. The analysis concluded that while the unification of the opposition as the main strategy to win elections did not appear to be a prominent factor in the explanation of hybrid regime stability, the contextual variables – strategy on the part of the incumbent and the previous performance of the candidates’ platforms in local elections – seemed to bear some explanatory power. Results obtained in this analysis are handicapped by a relative small sample of data but present a promising venue for future analysis. Future research can confirm our result on a bigger sample or compare our theory with other explanations about electoral (in)stability in hybrid regimes.

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