Essays on parties and personalism

Abstract

This dissertation comprises three essays that explore the role of political parties and personalism in democracies. The first essay posits that personalist democracies arise when politicians employ personalist strategies in contexts characterized by an unequal distribution of politically relevant resources. I test this theory using electoral and administrative data from Brazilian municipalities and find that more unequal contexts are associated with more personalist local democracies. The second essay examines how political parties influence voter behavior and electoral performance. Using conjoint survey experiments, I find that programmatic parties increase electoral support, while parties with strong leaders decrease it. The third essay delves into the consequences of personalist leaders on regime survival and quality. I find that personalization of political leadership lowers the odds of regime breakdown but promotes democratic erosion in the long term. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on the structural factors that make personalism more likely in some places than others and the consequences of personalism for political regimes worldwide.