Universität zu Köln

Ruth, Saskia Pauline (2014). The Quality of Representation in Latin America: Linking Citizens with Political Parties. PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln.

Preview

PDF Dissertation_Ruth.pdf - Accepted Version Download (1MB)

Abstract

After two decades of research on democratic transition and the consolidation of democracy in Latin America, researchers became increasingly sceptical and concerned with the quality of democratic representation. Consequently, the ‘crisis of representation’ in Latin America lies at the heart of any study concerned with the quality of democracy in this region. This dissertation contributes to the research agenda on the quality of democratic representation in three ways: (1) It focusses on the input-side of the representative process and systematically analyses dysfunctions of policy-based representation. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge the variety of mechanisms that establish the representative link between parties and voters. Hence, this dissertation highlights the importance of party-society linkages for both democratic accountability and policy responsiveness in democratic representation. (2) By concentrating on a geographical region that has rather been omitted during the development of traditional theories on democratic representation and party competition this dissertation challenges their implicit assumptions and generalizability and helps to re-assess them. Hence, it seeks to delimit travelling potential of concepts to new democracies, and paves the way for them to feedback on explanations of new developments in representative systems of established democracies. (3) Finally the empirical contribution lies in the creation of an original dataset on populist presidents and parties in Latin America and the compilation of a database on party-society linkages that merges micro-, meso-, and macro-level information from public opinion surveys, expert surveys, and election statistics covering over 20.000 citizens and more than 80 political parties in 18 Latin American countries.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD thesis)
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID ORCID Put Code Ruth, Saskia Pauline saskia.ruth@web.de UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED
Corporate Creators:	Universität zu Köln
URN:	urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-54422
Date:	7 January 2014
Language:	English
Faculty:	Faculty of Management, Economy and Social Sciences
Divisions:	Weitere Institute, Arbeits- und Forschungsgruppen > Department of Political Science and European Affairs
Subjects:	Political science
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Keywords Language Lateinamerika UNSPECIFIED Politische Parteien UNSPECIFIED Linkages UNSPECIFIED Repräsentation UNSPECIFIED
Date of oral exam:	16 September 2013
Referee:	Name Academic Title Kaiser, André Prof. Dr. Rohlfing, Ingo Juniorprofessor PhD
Refereed:	Yes
URI:	http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/5442