Party indiscipline as a democratic problem

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By Mar­cos Pérez Talia.

The role played by po­lit­i­cal par­ties in con­tem­po­rary democ­ra­cies is fun­da­men­tal. They are key play­ers be­cause they ful­fill var­i­ous tasks that, as a whole, serve to make the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem op­er­a­tive. The is­sue is that some of their mul­ti­ple func­tions may, in some cases, not be ad­e­quately ful­filled, which ends up af­fect­ing de­mo­c­ra­tic health. In this ar­ti­cle I want to em­pha­size party in­dis­ci­pline, fo­cus­ing on what hap­pened with some op­po­si­tion par­lia­men­tar­i­ans who re­cently be­gan their work. I seek to show that in­dis­ci­pline is syn­ony­mous with a low level of par­ti­san in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion, which ends up af­fect­ing the qual­ity of democ­racy.

The cur­rent par­lia­men­tary term be­gan last July 1. The first po­lit­i­cal ac­tion of the new rep­re­sen­ta­tives and sen­a­tors is to elect the boards of di­rec­tors of both cham­bers, in­clud­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of po­si­tions in bod­ies such as the Jury for the Pros­e­cu­tion of Mag­is­trates, the Mag­is­trates Coun­cil or the Bi­lat­eral Com­mis­sions. the Jury for the Im­peach­ment of Mag­is­trates, the Coun­cil of the Mag­i­s­tra­ture or the Bi­lat­eral Com­mis­sions. Such spaces are highly de­sir­able since they pro­vide not only greater vis­i­bil­ity but also im­por­tant re­sources. This usu­ally en­cour­ages the emer­gence of op­po­si­tion dis­si­dents who de­vi­ate from the party line, or spaces that, be­ing op­po­si­tion, ally them­selves with the rul­ing party.

In the Sen­ate, eight mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion have ne­go­ti­ated with Car­tismo to bring Sil­vio Ove­lar as pres­i­dent of Con­gress. In the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, also ten mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion have ne­go­ti­ated with Car­tismo to bring Raúl La­torre as pres­i­dent of the Lower House. The ex­pla­na­tions of some mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion who agreed with the rul­ing party were, to say the least, pe­cu­liar.

Lib­eral mem­ber Alejo Ríos jus­ti­fied his vote for Car­tismo by point­ing out that “I was not born to be an op­po­nent, I was al­ways pro-gov­ern­ment”, while Lib­eral sen­a­tor Édgar López jus­ti­fied his vote for Beto Ove­lar be­cause San­ti­ago Peña “wants to do his job well“. On the other hand, in Cruzada Na­cional, scan­dals lurked. As soon as Sen­a­tor Javier Chaque­ñito Vera was sworn in, he went to join the Cartista bench, and in a few hours he was ex­pelled from his party. Even more strik­ing is the case of Sen­a­tor Zenaida Del­gado, who not only al­lied her­self with the pro-gov­ern­ment bloc, but also re­signed from her party Cruzada Na­cional and went to cel­e­brate Ho­ra­cio Cartes’ birth­day at the ANR head­quar­ters.

Parties with undisciplined members make politics more uncertain and negotiation between blocs more costly. In addition, it ends up affecting citizen sentiment towards politics in general, and parties in particular. The political science literature also points out that institutionalization is a key criterion that parties need in order to strengthen democracy, as well as to achieve a high degree of quality in democratic performance.

Par­lia­men­tary in­dis­ci­pline is quite fre­quent in Paraguayan pol­i­tics, but these cases are es­pe­cially note­wor­thy be­cause they showed, at the be­gin­ning of the new pe­riod, how united in be­hav­ior the main op­po­si­tion blocs were. The dis­so­ci­a­tion be­tween the par­ty’s de­ci­sion and the ac­tions of some of its mem­bers soon be­came ev­i­dent. The Po­lit­i­cal Com­mit­tee of the PLRA had con­cretely re­solved to strengthen the op­po­si­tion space and avoid the Cartist takeover in Con­gress; the same for the Na­tional Cru­sade, which even ended up apol­o­giz­ing for its leaks.

One might in­tu­itively think that in­dis­ci­pline is more likely in re­cently cre­ated par­ties, such as Cruzada Na­cional, where a greater or­ga­ni­za­tional fab­ric, co­he­sion and es­prit de corps are still lack­ing. How­ever, the para­dox is that in the PLRA there is also a con­stant pres­ence of undis­ci­plined peo­ple, a 136-year-old party, strongly con­sti­tuted and or­ga­nized through­out the length and breadth of the coun­try. How can this be un­der­stood?

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties, whether old or new, have dif­fer­ent lev­els of de­vel­op­ment and evo­lu­tion. To ful­fill their ob­jec­tives, they form an or­ga­ni­za­tional struc­ture that con­tains an in­ter­nal sphere, which in­cludes party man­age­ment, pol­icy dis­cus­sion, and the re­la­tion­ship with con­gress; and an ex­ter­nal one, rooted in so­ci­ety. This dou­ble per­spec­tive is cap­tured by a clas­sic con­cept of po­lit­i­cal sci­ence called par­ti­san in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the work of po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Javier Duque, in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion is the process by which a party ac­quires, to a greater or lesser de­gree, con­sol­i­da­tion in its or­ga­ni­za­tion and in its links with the pop­u­la­tion. To eval­u­ate the lev­els of party in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion, the au­thor sug­gests mea­sur­ing in two di­men­sions: an in­ter­nal one, which he calls sys­tem­atic­ity; and an ex­ter­nal one, which he calls root­ing. As we are in­ter­ested here in par­lia­men­tary in­dis­ci­pline (which is part of the in­ter­nal dy­nam­ics), we will only look at the first di­men­sion, whose in­di­ca­tors and re­sults are pre­sented in the fol­low­ing table.

Table 1. Lev­els of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion in the in­ter­nal di­men­sion of the par­ties with undis­ci­plined par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in the cur­rent leg­isla­tive pe­riod.

Dimensions	Level of Institutionalization
COMPLEXITY	Strong	Weak	Very weak
Functional and hierarchical organization chart	PLRA	CN
Coordination bodies	PLRA	CN
Conflict between congressmen and party management		PLRA	CN
ROUTINIZATION	Strong	Weak	Very weak
Organization of Congresses and Conventions	PLRA	CN
Convention attendance levels	PLRA	CN
Application of the rules of the game in the election of the party’s leadership.	PLRA CN
Application of the rules of the game in the election of official party candidates.	PLRA – CN
Operation of internal disciplinary procedures		PLRA – CN
COHERENCE	Strong	Weak	Very weak
Voting discipline in the legislature		PLRA – CN
Compliance with program guidelines		PLRA – CN
Compliance with alliance and coalition policies		PLRA – CN

Source: pre­pared by the au­thors based on the work of Javier Duque.

The lev­els in­di­cated are es­ti­mates; they can be stronger or weaker de­pend­ing on the cri­te­ria of the eval­u­a­tor, the his­tor­i­cal mo­ment, etc. What we want to em­pha­size is that par­ties can have dif­fer­ent lev­els of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion both in­ter­nally and ex­ter­nally, re­gard­less of the chrono­log­i­cal age of the par­ties. That is, they can have a high level of root­ed­ness with so­ci­ety (such as the PLRA his­tor­i­cally, or Cruzada Na­cional in 2023) but a low level of or­ga­ni­za­tional co­her­ence, as shown in Table I.

Why is the level of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion rel­e­vant? If we think of the ex­ter­nal di­men­sion (root­ed­ness with so­ci­ety) it is clearly be­cause if the par­ties do not man­age to pen­e­trate so­ci­ety and have elec­toral suc­cess, they will not sur­vive. How­ever, the in­ter­nal di­men­sion (sys­tem­atic­ity) is much more com­plex. This is so be­cause, al­though par­ties may have suc­ces­sive elec­toral suc­cesses (win­ning par­lia­men­tary seats, gov­er­nor­ships, may­oral­ties, etc.), if they do not man­age to com­plex­ify their in­ter­nal struc­ture, rou­tinize their or­ga­ni­za­tion and make po­lit­i­cal ac­tion co­her­ent be­tween party au­thor­ity and par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, this ends up af­fect­ing not only the le­git­i­macy of the party but, in the long term, also de­mo­c­ra­tic health.

Par­ties with undis­ci­plined mem­bers make pol­i­tics more un­cer­tain and ne­go­ti­a­tion be­tween blocs more costly. In ad­di­tion, it ends up af­fect­ing cit­i­zen sen­ti­ment to­wards pol­i­tics in gen­eral, and par­ties in par­tic­u­lar. The po­lit­i­cal sci­ence lit­er­a­ture also points out that in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion is a key cri­te­rion that par­ties need in or­der to strengthen democ­racy, as well as to achieve a high de­gree of qual­ity in de­mo­c­ra­tic per­for­mance.

With re­spect to op­po­si­tion par­ties, it was stated that they will be stronger if they are co­her­ent, au­tonomous and deeply rooted in so­ci­ety, that is, if they are strongly in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized. Like­wise, in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized op­po­si­tion par­ties have greater ca­pac­ity and mo­bi­liza­tion re­sources to de­mand ac­count­abil­ity from the gov­ern­ment.

In a next ar­ti­cle we could pro­pose ex­pla­na­tions for the low lev­els of in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of some of the in­di­ca­tors, as well as tools that could help the par­ties to im­prove these in­dexes.

Cover im­age: Cham­ber of Sen­a­tors, Paraguay