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External Appeal, Internal Dominance: How Party Leaders Contribute to Successful Party Building

Many successful political parties depend for their initial electoral rise, early internal cohesion, and even long-term brand strength on a particular leader. Nevertheless, existing literature on party building tends to ignore or downplay the role of leaders. Thus, the question: What type of leader is good for party building? remains undertheorized. This article argues that leaders do matter for new party success (and failure), and it provides a systematic theory linking party leaders’ characteristics to party building outcomes. Specifically, it argues that externally appealing, internally dominant leaders facilitate successful party building by making their parties electorally viable and helping to prevent debilitating schisms during the formative years. The article highlights this argument through a comparative study of three new left parties in Latin America: two that survived intact (Brazil’s Workers’ Party, Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution), and one that splintered and collapsed (Peru’s United Left).

Traditionally, scholars have viewed dominant or charismatic political leaders as

impediments to successful party-building (Panebianco 1988; Mainwaring and Scully 1995;

Weyland 1996, 1999). Politicians who mobilize support based on personalistic appeals seldom

invest in party organizations that could limit their power and autonomy,1 and because such

appeals tend to be non-programmatic, personalistic parties and campaigns often hinder the

development of strong partisan brands. History offers numerous examples of personalistic

leaders who have abandoned, destroyed, or seriously weakened their own parties.

But history also furnishes many examples of leaders who, intentionally or not, have

contributed to party-building. A large number of the most successful established parties in the

contemporary developing world depended for their initial electoral rise, early internal cohesion,

and even long-term partisan brand strength on a particular leader.2

1 See, for example, Panebianco (1988, 67, 147). 2 Latin American examples include Peronism, Fujimorismo, and Chavismo, as well as more institutionalized parties such as Popular Action (AP) and APRA in Peru; the PLN in Costa Rica; AD and COPEI in Venezuela; the PRD and

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Political scientists tend to avoid placing individual leaders at the center of their analyses

for fear of excessive voluntarism. They often reject leadership variables as important, and fail to

conceptualize differences among leaders in systematic ways. Literature on party-building offers a

case in point. Despite the evident importance of party leaders, few studies, classical or

contemporary, argue that party leaders matter for party-building. Thus, the question: What type

of leader is good for party-building? remains undertheorized.3 The current article pushes against

these trends. It holds that party leaders do, in fact, matter for new party success and failure, and it

provides a systematic theory linking party leaders’ characteristics to party building outcomes.

Specifically, the article argues that a particular type of leader—one who is both externally

appealing and internally dominant—can be critical for successful party-building. Externally

appealing, internally dominant leaders perform two vital tasks for new parties. First, they win

votes. In doing so, they lift new parties that would otherwise be electorally marginal to national

electoral relevance. Second, they help prevent schisms, in several ways. Their coattails create

electoral and patronage incentives for lower elites not to defect. They facilitate collective

decision making and conflict settlement, anchoring dominant coalitions, shaping internal

debates, and acting as informal deciders and arbiters. And in presidential systems, they can

secure or impose their own selection as presidential candidate with limited internal dissent,

preventing debilitating power struggles. In short, by making new parties electorally viable and

helping to prevent schisms, externally appealing, internally dominant leaders can contribute

decisively to the initial rise and medium-term survival of new parties.

The article highlights this argument through a comparative study of Brazil’s Workers’

Party (PT), Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD), and Peru’s United Left (IU).

Dominican Liberation Party (PLD) in the Dominican Republic; and, more recently, El Salvador’s ARENA, Brazil’s PT and PSDB, and Mexico’s PRD. 3 Although see Weber (1965); Harmel and Svåsand (1993); Pedahzur and Brichta (2002).

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These factionalized, mass-based, left-wing parties all emerged and rose to electoral prominence

during the third wave of democratization in Latin America (1978-1995). Each depended on an

externally appealing leader for its initial electoral success: the PT on Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

(henceforth “Lula”), the PRD on Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, and the IU on Alfonso Barrantes.

Despite these and other analytically relevant similarities, the three parties experienced

contrasting fates. The IU suffered a fatal schism and collapsed. By contrast, the PT and PRD

survived early development intact and took root. The article will analyze the three parties’

divergent trajectories. It will demonstrate that the PT’s Lula da Silva and the PRD’s Cuauthémoc

Cárdenas were internally dominant, while the IU’s Barrantes was not. It will explain why these

leaders varied in their levels of internal power. And it will show that this variation led to schism

in the case of the IU and survival in the cases of the PT and PRD.

Given scholars’ lack of attention to, and theorizing about, leadership variables, the article

is a theory-building exercise. It is organized in two sections. The first fleshes out the theory,

while the second presents the three case studies. Drawing on archival materials, published elite

interviews, elite interviews with the author, and underutilized secondary literature in Spanish and

Portuguese, the case studies demonstrate the theory’s causal mechanisms at work in order to

suggest its initial plausibility. A brief conclusion follows.

The Argument

Every year, hundreds of new political parties are born in the developing world. The vast

majority of these parties die within a decade of their creation, either failing to take off

electorally, losing electoral support after experiencing initial success, or splitting and collapsing

(Mustillo 2009; Author). Of the small fraction of new parties that survive, a striking proportion

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depend—both for their electoral success and for their internal cohesion—on a single externally

appealing leader.

New parties so often electorally depend on externally appealing leaders because they tend

to have weak partisan brands. Established, or institutionalized, parties typically do have strong

partisan brands and thus can count on a sizable bloc of loyal voters to turn out and support them

in elections. But developing a partisan brand is no easy task; parties must first differentiate

themselves from their rivals and demonstrate consistency over time (Lupu 2016). Thus, when

parties are still young, their brands are usually “works in progress” and hence weak and

fragile. In effect, externally appealing party leaders substitute for strong partisan brands by

providing coattails, or votes that their parties would not otherwise receive.

In presidential democracies especially, the electoral appeal of individual leaders can be a

crucial means of mobilizing the support necessary for new parties to take off. As Samuels and

Shugart (2010) have shown, presidential systems compel parties to nominate politicians with

broad popular appeal. Parties without viable presidential candidates rarely become electorally

competitive, and non-competitive parties rarely endure. In Latin America, which is uniformly

presidentialist, founding leaders or leading presidential candidates often have played a decisive

role in making new parties electorally viable. In extreme cases, dominant personalities have laid

the basis for enduring partisan brands, as in the cases of Peronism, Fujimorismo, and Chavismo.

But even in the case of more institutionalized parties such as the American Revolutionary

Popular Alliance (APRA) and Popular Action (AP) in Peru; the National Liberation Party (PLN)

in Costa Rica; Democratic Action (AD) and the Independent Electoral Political Organization

Committee (COPEI) in Venezuela; the Dominican Revolutionary Party (PRD) and Dominican

Liberation Party (PLD) in the Dominican Republic; and, more recently, El Salvador’s Nationalist

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Republican Alliance (ARENA), Brazil’s PT and Brazilian Social Democracy Party (PSDB), and

Mexico’s PRD, founding leaders have played an indispensable role in early efforts to mobilize

popular support. Popular leaders hardly ensure party institutionalization; in fact, they often

hinder it. But without a popular leader at the top of the ticket, new parties are unlikely to take off

(especially in presidential democracies), making survival unlikely.

In addition to making new parties electorally viable, popular leaders help to make new

parties more cohesive. Just as strong partisan brands provide electoral incentives against

defection in established parties, a popular leader’s coattails provide electoral incentives against

defection in many new parties. In new parties with a popular leader, lower elites depend

electorally on the leader’s coattails and may hope or expect to receive patronage from him. Thus,

they have electoral and career incentives to stay in the party (and on good terms with the leader).

Yet, popular leaders do not guarantee cohesion. In fact, new parties that electorally

depend on a single leader are vulnerable to fatal schisms; after all, if the electorally indispensable

leader defects, the party will be likely to collapse. Various major new parties in Latin America

have collapsed in recent decades due to the defection of a popular leader. Venezuela’s Radical

Cause (LCR), which rose to national prominence in the early 1990s, disintegrated after the

defection of 1993 presidential candidate, Andrés Velásquez. The Guatemalan PAN suffered a

precipitous decline after founder Álvaro Arzú and presidential candidate Óscar Berger

abandoned the party in the early 2000s. Colombia’s PVC, which came out of nowhere to finish

second in the 2010 presidential election, was crippled by defections—including that of its

presidential candidate and best-known figure, Antanas Mockus—following the election. And, as

will be discussed below, Peru’s IU, which emerged as a major electoral force in the 1980s,

collapsed following the exit of Alfonso Barrantes in 1989. In other cases, new parties with

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electorally indispensable leaders have suffered crippling waves of lower elite defections. The

conservative Union of the Democratic Center (UCEDE), for example, which became Argentina’s

third largest party in the 1980s, collapsed after a wave of elite defections to the government of

Carlos Menem in the early 1990s.

One of this article’s central theoretical claims is that, where leaders combine external

appeal with internal dominance, such schisms become far less likely. What, then, is internal

dominance, where does it come from, and why, precisely, are externally appealing, internally

dominant leaders so critical for cohesion?

The Sources of Internal Dominance

An internally dominant leader is an elite with unquestioned internal authority, or who, in

common parlance, stands “head and shoulders” above all other elites. When a single leader

dominates, no other figure can seriously challenge her for the presidential candidacy, vie with

her for control of the party, or openly call for her expulsion without suffering internal

marginalization.

Internal dominance comes from several potential sources. One key source, to be sure, is

external appeal itself, which gives leaders control over lower elites’ electoral fortunes and public

sector careers. If a leader has unrivaled external appeal, other elites know that if the leader

defects, they will lose votes and may lose access to patronage. Thus, they have a material

incentive to accommodate the leader. They may side with him in internal debates, even if they

disagree. They may support his presidential candidacy despite otherwise preferring a different

leader. Externally appealing leaders may be able use their electoral indispensability as leverage

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in order to win concessions from lower elite opponents (e.g., Lula da Silva of Brazil’s PT)

[Hunter 2010].

Yet, external appeal by itself rarely translates into internal dominance. There are two

broad reasons for this. First, in some new parties, major factions are not motivated primarily by

electoral or patronage incentives (e.g., the early PRD in Mexico [Greene 2007]; the radical bloc

of Peru’s IU). To the extent that party members are ideological rather than pragmatic, externally

appealing leaders have less leverage over them, and therefore less internal power. Second, and

more importantly, electoral leverage is only one of multiple potential sources of internal power.

Internally dominant leaders rarely, if ever, depend exclusively on external clout as a source of

internal power. What are the other sources of internal power?

Crossfactional Ties

One additional source of internal power is crossfactional ties. In internally divided

parties, a leader who has productive working relationships with all major factions, and thus can

go back and forth between them in internal discussions and negotiations, may be “indispensable”

for brokering agreements, managing conflict, and keeping the party together (Ansell and Fish

1999). Such a leader, naturally, gains leverage over elites with an interest in or commitment to

party unity.

Developing crossfactional ties does not require—although in some cases it may be

facilitated by—personal charisma or ideological appeal. Several major party leaders in recent

decades who managed to establish hub-and-spokes relationships across internally riven party

organizations lacked other sources of internal authority such as control of patronage resources,

transformational charisma, or ideological or programmatic appeal (e.g., Carlos Menem of

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Argentina’s Peronists; Helmut Kohl of Germany’s Christian Democrats; François Mitterand of

France’s Socialists).4

Given that forging crossfactional links takes time, a leader with strong preexisting

crossfactional ties may be critical in the case of new parties. Along this dimension, one finds

variation. Some new party leaders have strong preexisting crossfactional ties because they played

leadership roles in their parties’ founding struggles and, in this capacity, worked closely with the

party’s various elites and feeder organizations (e.g., Lula of Brazil’s PT). But in other cases, new

party leaders have weak or virtually nonexistent preexisting crossfactional ties. Indeed, in some

cases, particular individuals are selected to lead new parties precisely because they are relative

outsiders, lack strong connections to all the party’s major factions, and thus do not tilt the

internal balance of power in favor of any particular faction (e.g., Alfonso Barrantes of Peru's IU).

Moral Authority

Another source of internal power is moral authority. Moral authority is the respect and

credibility that leaders have within their parties, typically due to their pre-party backgrounds.

Along this dimension, too, one finds variation. Some individuals become party leaders despite

having limited internal moral authority. This may occur when, as just described, new parties

select a relative outsider as their leader in order to shield the office of party leader from factional

conflict. Other new party leaders, in contrast, are deeply respected or beloved by most of the

base. Some even possess a mystical quality and are viewed by rank-and-file members as central

to the party's identity, or as the embodiment of its higher cause. Such stature may follow from

different aspects of a leader’s background, including revolutionary pedigree (e.g., Cuauhtémoc

Cárdenas of Mexico's PRD); class status (e.g., Lula da Silva of Brazil’s PT); acts of heroism 4 See Ansell and Fish (1999, 287-288); Levitsky (2003, 169-177).

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(e.g., Charles de Gaulle of France's Republicans); experiences of hardship (e.g., Nelson Mandela

of South Africa's African National Congress [ANC]); or protagonism in the party's founding

struggles (e.g., Lula da Silva of Brazil's PT, Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe's Zimbabwe African

National Union [ZANU]). Moral authority can also be rooted in personal charisma (Weber 1965;

Panebianco 1988).

Ideological/Programmatic Representativeness

A final source of internal power is ideological/programmatic agreement with, or

representativeness of, the party base. To be sure, base-level party attitudes tend to be

heterogeneous, and party leaders often have considerable autonomy in the ideological and

programmatic arenas (e.g., Levitsky 2003). Yet, ideological and programmatic

representativeness does matter. Party leaders tend to have more internal appeal and stronger,

broader internal support to the extent that their ideological/programmatic stances align with those

of party activists. Where leaders’ stances deviate from prevailing base-level ones, they become

more vulnerable to internal challenges.

In summary, internal dominance is almost never rooted in external appeal alone; it is also

rooted in factors such as crossfactional ties, moral authority, and ideological/programmatic

representativeness. The more of these sources, and the more of each source, that a leader

possesses, the more internally dominant he or she will be. Consequently, new party leaders, even

electorally indispensable ones, vary widely on the spectrum of internal power, from internally

dominant to internally weak.

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How Externally Appealing, Internally Dominant Leaders Prevent Schisms

Externally appealing, internally dominant leaders significantly reduce the likelihood of

schisms in new parties. They do much more than furnish coattails; they facilitate collective

decision making and, in several ways, prevent conflict from emerging, escalating or going

unresolved.

In addition to lacking strong brands, most new parties, especially heterogeneous, mass-

based ones, lack strong internal decision-making institutions. Often, constituent groups, drawn

from different sectors, regions and social classes, lack horizontal links to each other.

Consequently, new parties often cannot, by institutional means, aggregate member preferences,

decide and act collectively, or resolve contentious disagreements. Although many parties

eventually build strong internal institutions,5 new parties must do so from scratch, and they must

strive not to alienate important factions in the process. Internal institution-building is therefore

delicate and gradual. Many parties, in their early years, lack formal rules and procedures for

collective decision-making and conflict adjudication in important domains (e.g., Venezuela’s

LCR [Nogueira-Budny 2014]; the early PRD in Mexico [Martínez 2005]). Other new parties

institute formal unanimity (or near unanimity) requirements for collective decision making in

order to protect the interests of minority factions (e.g., Peru’s IU). Under either circumstance,

schism becomes a serious risk, as important conflicts may go unresolved, and important reforms

may be stymied.

Externally appealing, internally dominant leaders can provide solutions to these

problems. First, internally dominant leaders anchor dominant factions, which control parties’

internal machinery and facilitate collective decision making and action (e.g., the PT’s Lula; the

PRD’s Cárdenas). Second, internally dominant leaders can shape and even dictate the outcomes 5 E.g., the primary system in the major US parties.

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of internal debates (e.g., on campaining strategy; on alliances). Leaders with moral authority, in

particular, may be able to persuade a party’s elites or factions to moderate their positions, make

concessions, or change their views in order to broaden their party’s electoral appeal (e.g., the

PT’s Lula) [Hunter 2010]. Such leaders are unlikely to be dismissed as inauthentic, or as sellouts

or traitors, if their ideological or programmatic positions change or evolve with time (e.g., Lula).

Internally dominant leaders may use their control over the allocation of party positions and

candidacies as leverage, implicitly or explicitly, in disputes (e.g., Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas in

Mexico’s PRD [Author]). The inability to influence internal debate in these ways may strengthen

a leader’s incentive to defect (e.g., Alfonso Barrantes of Peru’s IU).

Third, internally dominant leaders can informally assume the role of preference

aggregator, collective decision maker and final arbiter. Where constituent groups lack horizontal

links, a leader with crossfactional ties can aggregate their preferences and factor them into her

party-level decision making. And crucially, a leader whose “word is law” may be able to impose

or veto important decisions, including contentious ones, unilaterally (e.g., Victor Raúl Haya de la

Torre in Peru’s APRA; Juan Perón in Argentina’s PJ; Roberto D’Aubuisson in El Salvador’s

ARENA; Jaime Guzmán in Chile’s Independent Democratic Union [UDI]; Cuauthémoc

Cárdenas in Mexico’s PRD; Lula da Silva in Brazil’s PT). In short, just as an electorally

indispensable leader substitutes for a partisan brand, an internally dominant leader can substitute

for institutions of collective decision making and conflict resolution—and, in doing so, help

parties to “speak in a single voice” and withstand internal conflict.

Fourth and finally, in presidential systems, parties with externally appealing, internally

dominant leaders seldom suffer debilitating conflicts over presidential candidate selection. This

matters because presidential candidate selection is a winner-take-all choice, often with higher

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stakes than any other internal party decision. Naturally, leaders who combine external appeal

with internal dominance can secure or impose their own selection with limited internal dissent.

By contrast, party leaders who are not internally dominant, even if they are electorally

indispensable, may face serious or insurmountable resistance from rival contenders for the

party’s presidential candidacy (e.g., Alfonso Barrantes of Peru’s IU; Andrés Velásquez of

Venezuela’s LCR). In such cases, debilitating schism may result, as the presidential aspirant who

is not selected, or fears not being selected, might defect.

It is important to highlight, in closing, that although the foregoing argument centers on

party leaders, it is structuralist, not voluntarist. Internal dominance is rarely based on

extraordinary leadership qualities, and most internally dominant figures are far from being “one-

of-a-kind” leaders. Internal dominance tends to be based on more objective endowments that

leaders bring to their parties: external appeal, preexisting network ties, pedigree, and personal

backgrounds of leadership and activism. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas of Mexico’s PRD, for example,

arguably was not a one-of-a-kind leader—as was, for example, Lula da Silva of Brazil’s PT.

Nevertheless, he was dominant within his party due to various starting endowments that he

possessed, and in this respect, he clearly differed from Alfonso Barrantes of Peru’s IU.

The Argument at Work

The divergent fates of Brazil’s PT (survival), Mexico’s PRD (survival) and Peru’s IU

(schism) illustrate the critical importance of new party leaders who combine external appeal with

internal dominance. A few broad similarities help to ground this three-case comparison. The PT,

PRD, and IU all emerged and debuted on the national political stage during the third wave of

democratization in Latin America (1978-1995). They were the most electorally successful left

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parties born during the third wave in their respective countries. Despite being born in distinct

regime contexts,6 all three parties spent their formative years with limited access to state

resources and mass media, inherited and built powerful grassroots organizations, and depended

on these organizations to mobilize voters. The three parties had generally similar ideological

profiles and factional divisions during their formative years. They were left-wing, with platforms

that centered, broadly speaking, on state-led redistribution. They incorporated groups from

across the left spectrum and, consequently, were heterogeneous fronts composed of radical and

moderate tendencies that conflicted on a range of issues. Finally, none of the three parties

emerged from a violent national conflict (e.g., a civil war), which is relevant because origins in

violent conflict can generate elite cohesion, as shown in recent comparative studies of Southeast

Asian (Slater 2010), African (LeBas 2011) and Latin American (Author) parties. During their

formative periods, the PT, PRD and IU experienced, at most, irregular and localized violence

that left the vast majority of party members unharmed and unthreatened.

The below case studies trace the parties’ divergent outcomes to the different levels of

internal power of their respective party leaders. Lula, Cárdenas and Barrantes were electorally

indispensable for their parties; they alone could kill their parties by defecting. Lula and

Cárdenas, however, never had a strong incentive to defect from the early PT and PRD. Cárdenas

dominated internal affairs and succeeded in securing the PRD’s presidential candidacy

repeatedly, with limited internal contestation. Lula was similarly dominant within the PT. He

secured the PT’s presidential candidacy four times, with virtually no internal contestation, and

prevailed upon the PT’s radical tendencies to moderate their rhetoric and demands in an effort to

broaden the party’s electoral appeal. In contrast, Barrantes, the IU’s presidential candidate in

6 While the IU was born into Peru’s new democracy, the PT and PRD formed under authoritarian rule; the PT spent its first five years under military dictatorship, and the PRD spent its first eleven years under the single-party rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

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1985, failed to moderate the IU’s radical tendencies and could not impose himself as the IU’s

presidential candidate in 1990. In response, he defected to run for the presidency independently,

an action that, however electorally rational it may have been for Barrantes, killed the IU.

We may say, then, that the IU collapsed because in contrast to the PT and PRD, the

externally appealing leader on whom it depended, Alfonso Barrantes, lacked sufficient internal

power to impose a party line or, more importantly, secure his presidential candidacy (See Figure

1 and Table 1).

Figure 1: External Appeal, Internal Dominance

Table 1: External Appeal, Internal Dominance, Schism or No Schism (IU, PT, PRD)

Externally appealing

leader7

Internally dominant leader

Outcome

IU (Peru) Yes No Schism PT (Brazil) Yes Yes No schism

PRD (Mexico) Yes Yes No schism 7 During the party’s first decade of existence, did most top party elites perceive that the leader, compared to all other elites, had the best chance of victory in presidential elections? If so, the leader is scored as externally appealing; if not, s/he is not.

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This difference is somewhat puzzling, given that all three leaders (not just Barrantes) suffered

electoral setbacks after early breakout performances and saw their images of external appeal

decline as a result. Following his near victory in the 1989 Brazilian presidential election, Lula

unexpectedly lost the 1994 presidential election in a landslide. After near victory in Mexico’s

1988 presidential election, Cárdenas finished a distant third in Mexico’s 1994 presidential

election. And, after winning the 1983 Lima mayoral election, Barrantes was roundly defeated in

the 1985 presidential election and, to widespread surprise, narrowly lost his 1986 Lima mayoral

reelection bid. In contrast to Barrantes, however, Lula and Cárdenas, following their losses,

secured future presidential candidacies with little or no internal contestation (Lula in the 1998

and 2002 presidential elections, Cárdenas in the 2000 presidential election). Barrantes’s inability

to do the same triggered his fatal departure. Why were Cárdenas and Lula internally dominant,

while Barrantes was not? (See Table 2 for a preview of the case studies’ arguments.)

Table 2: Sources of Internal Power (Barrantes, Lula, Cárdenas)

Crossfactional

Ties8 Moral

authority9

Ideological/ programmatic agreement10

Internal dominance

IU’s Alfonso Barrantes (Peru) Weak Low Low No PT’s Lula da Silva (Brazil) Strong High High Yes

PRD’s Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas (Mexico)

Strong High High Yes

8 During the party’s first decade of existence, did the leader (1) regularly meet with the leaders of all major factions and (2) consistently support the inclusion of all major factions? If so, the leader’s crossfactional ties are scored as strong; if not, they are scored as weak. 9 Did the leader enter the party with an extraordinary source of internal mystique, respect or credibility such as: revolutionary pedigree, background of heroism, experience of extraordinary hardship, or protagonism in party’s founding struggles? If so, the leader’s moral authority is scored as high; if not, it is scored as low. 10 During the party’s first decade of existence, did the leader’s ideological and programmatic stances correspond to those prevailing among active members? If so, the leader’s ideological/programmatic agreement is scored as high; if not, it is scored as low.

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Alfonso Barrantes and Peru’s United Left (IU)

The IU was a mass-based socialist electoral coalition founded in September 1980, shortly

after the May 1980 general election that marked Peru’s full transition from military rule to

democracy. During the 1980s, with Alfonso Barrantes as its lead candidate, the IU rose to

national prominence, becoming not only one of Peru’s three leading parties—alongside the

American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (APRA) and Popular Action (AP)—but one of the

most powerful left forces in all of Latin America.

The IU depended on Barrantes for its viability as a contender for national power. In the

words of ex-IU elite, Henry Pease, “without Barrantes, the IU was nothing.”11 Among IU

leaders, Barrantes was singularly popular among Peru’s floating, lower-income voters, a decisive

segment of the national electorate during the 1980s. These lower-income voters typically favored

redistribution but did not support any particular party—and certainly did not support Peru’s

partisan left.12 Many of them supported Barrantes, however, who helped to soften and humanize

the image of the Peruvian left.13 By attracting lower-income voters, Barrantes also attracted more

pragmatic, left-leaning voters willing to cast their vote for an electorally viable ticket uniting the

combined forces of the partisan left and the more broadly appealing Barrantes.

Barrantes’s main source of power within the IU was his singular external appeal, which

made him electorally indispensable. At no point during the 1980s did a left figure emerge in Peru

who could rival Barrantes’s mass popularity. Even in the late 1980s, after Barrantes’s image had

been partially tainted by successive electoral losses, his status as the IU’s most electable elite

remained undisputed. Barrantes’s moderate supporters repeatedly emphasized that Barrantes was

either the left candidate with the best chance of winning the 1990 presidential election, or the

11 Author’s interview with Henry Pease, Dec. 21, 2010. 12 Roberts (1998, 248); Herrera (2002, 82, 186). 13 Author’s interview with Aldo Panfichi, Dec. 27, 2010, and conversation with Martín Tanaka, Jan. 13, 2011.

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only left candidate with any chance of winning (Herrera 2002, 379-380, 444, 459; Gonzales

2011, 40). His radical opponents, until the end, conceded his unmatched electoral clout

(Cameron 1994, 80).

Yet, Barrantes singular external appeal, almost universally recognized, did not translate

into internal dominance. As Tanaka (1998) notes in his analysis of Barrantes’s failed attempt to

impose himself as the IU’s presidential candidate in 1990: “It is interesting to note the enormous

distance between a Barrantes well-positioned in the electoral preferences of the citizenry and his

situation of extreme weakness within the left…. The separation between the electoral arena and

internal party arena, the difficulty of investing the capital accumulated in one in the other,

appears clearly” (139).

Barrantes was internally weak, in part, because IU radicals, who constituted the bulk of

the IU base, assigned limited value to winning elections and holding executive office. IU radicals

did not consider electoral failure—their own, much less the IU’s—existentially threatening

(Cameron 1994, 78). Moreover, they were openly wary of governing, and hence of winning the

executive positions that Barrantes sought (Roberts 1998, 224, 230, 252-253). Both factors

reduced Barrantes’s electoral leverage over them.

More importantly, popular appeal was the only “card” that Barrantes had to “play” within

the IU. His most significant shortcoming as a leader was that his internal power rested almost

exclusively on electoral leverage. His moral authority was limited, his crossfactional ties were

weak, and he had significant substantive differences with a range of coalition partners,

particularly IU radicals but also, in certain key areas, the bulk of coalition moderates as well.

These internal weaknesses can be traced, in large measure, to the circumstances of

Barrantes’s selection as IU leader. Given the sectarian character of the IU’s founding parties, IU

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party leaders, at the coalition’s inception, were unwilling to cede its highest executive post and

lead candidacy to a member or supporter of an internal partisan rival.14 They selected Barrantes

as IU leader because, in addition to having electoral potential, he did not belong to any of the

constituent parties15 and was perceived as relatively neutral between them.16 Neutral,

independent leaders, however, are, almost by definition, weakly rooted in their own parties and

coalitions; they tend to lack the personal background and preexisting network ties characteristic

of internally dominant party leaders. And so it was with Barrantes. While his external origins

helped to make him acceptable, they also helped to make him weak.

When the IU was founded, Barrantes had never held public office, and more importantly,

for three decades, he had not played a leadership role on the partisan or social left. Unlike most

leaders of the Peruvian left, for example, he had not built or taken the reins of a party. He also

had not participated visibly or prominently in the mobilization of civil society fomented by the

Velasco military government (1968-1975) or in the subsequent mass movement to bring down

the Morales Bermúdez military government in the late 1970s. In short, Barrantes was not a

founder of the IU, in contrast, for example, to IU constituent party leaders such as Jorge del

Prado (Peruvian Communist Party [PCP]) and Javier Diez Canseco (Revolutionary Vanguard

14 Even after Barrantes defected in 1989, IU elites, through negotiation, chose another independent, Henry Pease, as the coalition’s presidential candidate in 1990. 15 Barrantes briefly joined the Soviet-aligned Peruvian Communist Party (PCP) but exited amid rising Sino-Soviet tensions. Barrantes also briefly joined the the Popular Democratic Union (UDP) coalition in order to run on the 1980 presidential slate of the larger coalition, the Alliance of the Revolutionary Left (ARI); he did not, however, belong to or affiliate with any of the UDP’s constituent parties (i.e., VR, MIR). The ARI coalition ultimately selected Hugo Blanco as its candidate. During this time, Barrantes did maintain a fairly close, though informal, relationship with Patria Roja. 16 Barrantes was one of relatively few figures on the Peruvian left who had participated in both the traditional Marxist left (through his brief affiliation with the PCP) and the new left forces that proliferated in Peru in the 1960s and 1970s (through his brief affiliation with the UDP). One of the PCP’s top leaders during the 1980s, Guillermo Herrera, thus described Barrantes as a “hinge” between the old and new lefts in Peru (Herrera 2002, 82). IU members and analysts commonly used terms such as “balancing factor,” “balancing leader,” and “transactional element” to refer to Barrantes. Political analyst Fernando Tuesta, in a 1987 editorial for the left-wing La República, described Barrantes as a “sum of opposites, equal to zero” (“¿Era Barrantes imprescindible?,” La República, June 3, 1987).

19

[VR], Mariateguista Unified Party [PUM]). In the apt formulation of IU elite and Barrantes ally,

Marcial Rubio, Barrantes did not found the IU but instead was called to preside over it.17

Barrantes thus entered the IU with limited moral authority. Because he was unproven,

largely unknown, and had not played a leading role in the left’s recent struggles, prominent party

members and pundits, throughout the 1980s, openly questioned whether he had truly earned the

position of IU president. In December of 1981, Horacio Zevallos, a radical IU deputy who had

run for president in 1980, publicly stated: “[He] does not represent any of the organized political

sectors, nor does he represent the masses. He is a novice lawyer, and we have made him, a

substitute, a center forward in the leadership of the left.”18 After Barrantes’s resignation as IU

president in mid-1987, political analyst Fernando Tuesta highlighted his unimpressive record

prior to the IU’s formation:

On what basis did they elect [Barrantes] [IU leader]? […] For his political record…? That does not appear to be the reason. […] [I]t is enough to review what is noted as most noteworthy in his political career: a dip in the San Marcos pool when he was the Aprista president of the [San Marcos Student Federation] in an act against Nixon; the pen given to him by Zhou Enlai on a trip to China in 1964 with which he signed his entry application for the PCP; and from then until…1980. (Final ellipsis in the original)19

Ex-IU members have offered similar assessments in retrospective analyses and interviews.

Gonzales (2011) writes: “[T]he parties sustained that Barrantes was their creation; that the front

was the result of the popular movement, and that [Barrantes’s] personalized leadership was a

contingent consequence” (39). In the succinct formulation of one moderate ex-IU member,

“Barrantes was accepted as a candidate but questioned as a leader.”20

17 Quoted in Fernando Tuesta, “¿Era Barrantes imprescindible?,” La República, June 3, 1987. 18 Quoted in Herrera (2002, 119). Original source not provided. 19 Fernando Tuesta, “¿Era Barrantes imprescindible?,” La República, June 3, 1987. 20 Author’s interview with Aldo Panfichi, Dec. 27, 2010.

20

Barrantes also had weak crossfactional ties. Naturally, as an independent and relative

outsider, he did not bring to the position of IU leader a network of strong preexisting

relationships with the coalition’s top leadership. Moreover, after becoming IU president, he did

not act as a crossfactional broker or arbiter. On the contrary, by the mid-1980s, he advocated the

expulsion of the PUM and Union of the Revolutionary Left (UNIR), the IU’s two strongest

parties, which together constituted the vast bulk of its radical bloc (Cameron 1994, Ch. 5;

Herrera 2002, passim). In mid-1987, Barrantes resigned as IU president, abandoning even the

formal pretense of standing above the IU’s competing tendencies or representing the coalition as

a whole (Herrera 2002, 370). Roberts (1998) summarizes, more broadly, that Barrantes “tended

to be an aloof leader who was disengaged from the internal affairs of the IU coalition…” (248).

For most of the IU’s existence, the role of crossfactional broker was assumed not by

Barrantes, but by the neutral bloc, a group of pro-unity moderates anchored by the Peruvian

Communist Party and independent left Christians Henry Pease and Rolando Ames.21 The PCP

and left Christians consistently opposed any expulsions or divisions within the front. Especially

as the 1980s drew to a close, they frequently met and communicated both with Barrantes and his

allies, on the one hand, and with leaders of the radical bloc, on the other, in a futile effort to keep

the coalition united.22 Far from standing above faction, then, Barrantes led one of the two

factions that the neutral bloc mediated between.

Finally, Barrantes, a moderate, was not ideologically representative of the IU base, which

was dominated by radical left activists.23 Barrantes had a tense relationship with IU radicals from

21 See Cameron (1994, Chapter 5); Roberts (1998, Chapter 8); Herrera (2002, passim); Gonzales (2011, 39). 22 See Herrera (2002, passim). 23 From the IU’s inception, the radical PUM and UNIR were its largest and most electorally potent constituent parties, and radical party members always held a majority in the IU’s national executive committee since the coalition’s inception. Yet, around the midpoint of the 1980s, the internal balance of forces began to shift further in the radicals’ favor. Thus, the presence of a moderate like Barrantes at the helm of the IU became more of a structural problem in the second half of the 1980s.

21

the IU’s inception, but this relationship negatively escalated and became quite hostile during the

second half of the 1980s. In large part, this was because Barrantes took moderate, not radical,

positions on the central ideological and strategic questions that polarized the coalition in the late

1980s. As Peru plunged into security and economic crisis, Barrantes persisted in his longstanding

position that left should pursue its agenda exclusively through Peru’s democratic institutions. He

prioritized victory in the 1990 presidential election and favored collaborating with APRA and the

armed forces in order to save Peruvian democracy from the twin scourges of hyperinflation and

the Shining Path insurgency. It is important to highlight, in this connection, that Barrantes

developed a close, amicable relationship with Alán García in the years after becoming mayor of

Lima in 1983; IU radicals vehemently objected to this relationship, accusing García of using

Barrantes to tame and divide the IU by marginalizing its radical wing.

Barrantes and his allies tried and failed to force the radical bloc to moderate. Throughout

the late 1980s, Barrantes and his allies publicly derided IU radicals, calling them “vanguardist

militarists,” dismissing their views as infantile and ultra-leftist, and, after January 1989,

demanding to no avail that the PUM—the strongest of the IU’s radical parties—categorically

reject armed struggle, as the IU had voted to do in the session on political theses at its I Congress

(Herrera 2002, 460-462, 475).

In sum, although Barrantes was electorally indispensable, he had limited moral authority,

weak crossfactional ties, and low ideological representativeness. These factors made him

internally weak, and because of this, he proved unable to impose himself as the IU’s 1990

presidential candidate, which resulted in his fatal defection. More specifically, in the lead-up to

the 1990 general election, the IU’s radical bloc, which held a majority on the coalition’s national

executive committee, opposed Barrantes’s selection as presidential candidate and insisted on an

22

internal primary in which they could field their own candidate. Although most IU moderates

supported Barrantes’s candidacy, they were unwilling to threaten to defect with him in support of

an independent presidential bid; instead, they pressed Barrantes to run in the IU’s internal

primary. Barrantes thus lacked sufficient leverage to persuade IU radicals to grant him the

candidacy without an internal contest. Unable to impose his candidacy undemocratically,

Barrantes faced a dilemma: he could run in an internal primary and risk being defeated by a

radical candidate, or he could defect from the IU with his small club of moderate allies and run

in the first round of the presidential election without the IU label behind him. Barrantes believed,

with reason, that he might lose an internal primary (Tanaka 1998, 139).24 The radical bloc had a

mobilizational advantage vis-à-vis moderates in internal elections, and the national executive

committee that it controlled imposed high barriers to participation in the primary, which

heightened this advantage. Barrantes concluded that his best chance of winning the Peruvian

presidency was to contest the first round independently of the IU. His hope was that, by running

independently, he would reach the second round of the presidential race, whereupon a broad

center-left coalition (including much of the IU) would be likely to coalesce around him. By this

rationale, Barrantes defected from the IU—and ultimately killed it. In the 1990 presidential

election, IU presidential candidate Henry Pease won only 8% of the vote, while Barrantes,

competing against the IU label and party machines, garnered a mere 5%. Neither Barrantes nor

the IU recovered. In the early 1990s, Barrantes retired from politics, while the IU splintered and

collapsed.

24 In addition, as Cameron (1994) observes in his in-depth analysis of the IU’s division, Barrantes was personally sensitive and did not want to expose himself to mistreatment during a contentious internal primary campaign.

23

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas and Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD)

The PRD was born in 1989 under the authoritarian rule of the hegemonic Institutional

Revolutionary Party (PRI). It grew out of a mass movement to elect leftist PRI defector,

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, president of Mexico in 1988. After Carlos Salinas of the PRI defeated

Cárdenas in an election widely viewed as fraudulent, the movement that backed Cárdenas

strengthened, and from it, the PRD emerged.

Cárdenas was electorally indispensable to the early PRD. In its first decade, the PRD was

in the process of building a national brand, but with limited access to electronic media (Lawson

2002), it could not build support quickly (Author). By contrast, Cárdenas did not need the media,

or even a campaign, in order to attract mass electoral support. Because of his last name, he

“communicated just in virtue of existing…. The campaign was carried out every day in

school.”25

Cárdenas was the son of General Lázaro Cárdenas, who served as a general during the

Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and subsequently as Mexico’s president (1934-1940). Lázaro

Cárdenas was a radically progressive president, implementing extensive agrarian reform, making

pioneering investments in education, infrastructure and social insurance, and nationalizing

Mexico's oil industry. PRI presidents prior to Salinas universally recognized “the General” as

Mexico's greatest ever (Borjas 2003, 510).

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas proved his immense electoral clout in the 1988 presidential

election, and after the election, for more than a decade, he was the only leader on the Mexican

left capable of seriously contesting for national power. Without Cárdenas’s coattails, the PRD

would not have been nationally viable. As party member Arnoldo Martínez wrote in early 1991,

“there is a man whose level surpasses the PRD, who is a national leader... That is Cuauhtémoc 25 Author's conversation with Andrés Lajous, July 15, 2011.

24

Cárdenas.”26 Borjas (2003) summarizes that “the charismatic leader and not the PRD was the

receiver of the votes... [W]ithout his presence [the PRD] was nothing” (507-508). Cárdenas’s

coattails also generated a degree of cohesion, as “there were few external incentives for the

party’s intermediate leaders to split” under Cárdenas’s leadership (Rodríguez 2010, 257).

In addition to attracting votes, Cárdenas attracted members and activists. Indeed, it was

Cárdenas, not the PRD, who supplied most PRD activists with collective incentives, or a “higher

cause,” during the party’s early years. As Rodríguez (2010) states, Cárdenas had “an almost

monopolistic capacity to produce collective goods” for the rank-and-file (255). Broadly

speaking, the loyalty of PRD activists to secondary party leaders had “an indirect character,

given that [their loyalty] was fundamentally directed to [Cárdenas] and only in the second place

to the party itself... The charismatic leader established himself as the source of other leaders'

legitimacy...” (Borjas 2003, 450-451).

Cárdenas’s legitimacy and capacity to inspire loyalty within the PRD followed, in large

part, from his moral authority on the Mexican left. In the words of urban social movement leader

and PRD member, Javier Hidalgo, Cárdenas possessed “the moral quality to be everyone's

leader.”27 Cárdenas’s moral authority had multiple sources. It was rooted, partially, in his

political record prior to the PRD’s founding. As PRI governor of Michoacán (1980-1986),

Cárdenas opposed and defied the neoliberal reforms of the Miguel de la Madrid government

(1982-1988). He subsequently defected from the right-tacking PRI and, if not for systematic

electoral fraud against him, likely would have prevailed (and ended PRI hegemony) in the 1988

presidential election. After the election, Cárdenas refused to be co-opted, rejecting President

26 Proceso, no. 741, January 14, 1991. 27 Author's interview with Javier Hidalgo, August 4, 2011.

25

Salinas’s offer of the regency of Mexico City and insisting on democratic intransigence and

sustained confrontation.

But above all, Cárdenas’s moral authority came from his lineage. “Cárdenas” was the last

name “most respected by the political left” (Borjas 2003, 293). As the only son of General

Lázaro Cárdenas, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas bore, for Mexican leftists, the legacy of the Mexican

Revolution. His pedigree gave him an almost mystical quality for much of the PRD base.28

Cárdenas did not have especially strong preexisting crossfactional ties, but he famously—

notoriously, in the view of many—cultivated them as PRD leader. At the base level, Cárdenas's

“incontestable leadership became a node of organization between the different groups that...did

not manage to organize horizontally” (Rodríguez 2010, 254, 263).29 At the elite level, Cárdenas

was “the one responsible for building bridges” (Martínez 2005, 99). Among national leaders,

“the establishment of direct contacts with [Cárdenas] became almost a rule” (Prud'homme 1997,

12 note 30). Cárdenas “occupied the center, toward which the distinct corrientes [factions] with

their respective leaders converged” (Prud'homme 2003, 118).

Reinforcing these crossfactional ties, Cárdenas, in his leadership style, took care not to

alienate secondary party leaders. He did not directly involve himself in disputes or dismiss

alternative perspectives. Instead, “in the public domain, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas insisted on

presenting himself as just another party member” (Borjas 2003, 509) and attempted, where

possible, to synthesize moderate and radical positions.30

Finally, in contrast to Barrantes, Cárdenas ideologically represented the core of his

party’s base. The PRD base, drawn primarily from social movements and (to a lesser extent) the

28 Author's conversation with Fernanda Somuano, June 9, 2011. 29 Borjas (2003) similarly writes that the party's “distinct subunits...more than interacting among themselves, established direct linkages with [Cárdenas]” (448). 30 Cárdenas himself wrote in August of 1995, “I have tried to avoid being involved in disputes between groups and factions within the party” (Proceso, no. 982, August 28, 1994).

26

former PRI, was predominantly radical in orientation (Greene 2007; Author). Despite his

inclusive leadership style, Cárdenas consistently stood for radical positions during the late 1980s

and 1990s. He prioritized base-level demands, supported the conception of the PRD as a

movement, and took intransigent, even extreme positions at the expense of the PRD’s broader

electoral appeal (e.g., opposing negotiation with the PRI; opposing NAFTA; meeting with

Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista National Liberation Army). Cárdenas’s steadfast

radicalism as party leader helped to cement radical groups’ loyalty to him (Borjas 2003, 303).

Cárdenas’s combination of characteristics—electoral indispensability, moral authority,

crossfactional ties and ideological representativeness of the base—made him internally

dominant. He “stood above the different leaders that converged and coexisted in the PRD”

(Borjas 2003, 299). From the late 1980s until the end of the 1990s, key party decisions were

taken, and conflicts adjudicated, by Cárdenas personally, often without debate or negotiation

(Bruhn 1997, 190; Borjas 2003, 451), and rarely through formal procedures, which remained

weakly institutionalized throughout this period (Borjas 2003, 445-460; Prud’homme 2003, 104,

118; Martínez 2005, 97-101) and beyond (Mossige 2013).31 Cárdenas thus played a “substituting

role for the lack of institutionalization” (Martínez 2005, 101). 32

In order to manage his decision-making agenda and responsibilities as leader, Cárdenas

created and anchored an informal dominant coalition. In a practice known as comunización, he

appointed a network of aides, to whom he delegated and entrusted different tasks, and who spoke

for him. Although the nucleus around Cárdenas never became a formal faction, or corriente, it

did constitute, for Prud'homme (1996) and Rodríguez (2010, 256), the early PRD's dominant

coalition, and its “central factor was Cárdenas's incontestable leadership” (Rodríguez 2010, 256).

31 “[G]etting the party to adopt a policy depended less on debate or construction of a compromise than on convincing Cárdenas” (Bruhn 1997, 190). 32 “…Consolida su ascendencia y papel supletorio a la falta de institucionalización.”

27

Operating outside and above formal channels, Cárdenas vanquished internal competitors

and exercised dominance in three main areas: executive candidate selection, the acquisition of

posts within the party apparatus,33 and party program and tactics. More specifically, he imposed

a radical party line (the “line of intransigence”) during the PRD’s early years; he lent decisive

support to Porfirio Muñoz Ledo’s successful campaign for the PRD presidency in 1993; in the

mid-1990s, he imposed radical positions, such as those to meet with Subcomandante Marcos of

the Zapatista National Liberation Army, to oppose NAFTA, and to back out of negotiations on

electoral reform; he lent decisive support to Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s successful

campaign to replace Muñoz Ledo as president of the PRD in 1996; he resoundingly defeated

Muñoz Ledo in an internal primary election to decide the PRD’s mayoral candidate in the

Federal District in 1997; and, on the strength of overwhelming elite and base-level support, he

secured the PRD’s presidential candidacy in both 1994 and 2000, in the absence of a formal

candidate selection procedure (Author).

Cárdenas became less active in internal PRD affairs after the mid-1990s and, following

his loss in the 2000 presidential election, retired from electoral politics and retreated from

internal party life more fully. By this time, however, the PRD was far less electorally dependent

on Cárdenas than it had been in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since at least 2000, most

Mexicans have been able to locate the PRD party symbol, an Aztec Sun, on the left-right

spectrum,34 and partisan voters have guaranteed the PRD a solid electoral floor nationally. Thus,

by the time Cárdenas effectively stepped down as PRD leader, the PRD brand had strengthened,

making the PRD nationally viable and creating electoral incentives against elite defection

33 Because Cárdenas commanded unrivaled loyalty among the PRD base, any lower elite who aspired to the party presidency or sought broad internal support required Cárdenas's backing (Author). 34 2000 Mexico Panel Study. Accessed on Dec. 16, 2014. <http://web.mit.edu/clawson/www/polisci/research/mexico06/Papers.shtml#TSAccordionHead296290>

28

independently of any particular leader.

The PRD’s development since the mid-1990s is well-known and widely studied.35 Many

scholars treat the PRD as a failure or underachiever, citing its repeated presidential defeats and

internal dysfunction.36 The PRD remains weakly institutionalized and plagued by factional

infighting (Mossige 2013). It still has not won the presidency, arguably having paid a price for

catering to its base (Greene 2007). In the last few years, the party has suffered a drop in electoral

support and the defections of its two former leaders and repeat presidential candidates, Andrés

Manuel López Obrador (in 2012) and Cuauthémoc Cárdenas (in 2014). López Obrador’s

personalistic vehicle, National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), currently rivals the PRD in

national electoral support and has overtaken the PRD in the Federal District, the PRD’s

bastion.37

Yet, the PRD’s problems, while significant, should not be overstated. Unlike the

personalistic MORENA, the PRD is an institutionalized party, and it remains a major national

contender. Since 1994, the PRD has won at least 10% of the vote in Mexico’s lower house of

congress, with a higher average vote share than Brazil’s PT. Since 1998, it has won over a dozen

governorships—and an additional three in coalition with the PAN. Since 1997, it has

continuously held the mayoralty of the Federal District, one of the country’s most important

elected offices.

For the PRD, collapse remains unlikely. The party’s core electorate virtually guarantees it

a high baseline level of access to office. It also guarantees access to financial resources; the

landmark electoral reforms of 1996, which tie generous public financing to parties’

35 See Borjas (2003); Martínez (2005); Rodríguez (2010); Mossige (2013). 36 Mossige (2013); Greene (2007); Bruhn (1997). 37 AMLO left the PRD shortly after his loss in the 2012 presidential election. He now leads the National Renovation Movement (MORENA), a left party in Mexico that became officially registered in 2014. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas left the PRD in late 2014, citing a range of unresolved differences with the party leadership.

29

congressional electoral performance, continue to fill PRD coffers. Additionally, PRD activists

remain an important electoral asset.

In sum, the PRD is an institutionalized party that perennially contends for national power.

Very few Latin American parties born in recent decades have achieved as much (Author). In

comparative terms, then, the PRD is an unmistakable case of successful party-building, and

Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’s external appeal and internal dominance during the party’s formative

years were critical for this success.

Lula da Silva and Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT)

Brazil’s Workers’ Party (PT) was established in 1980 under Brazil’s military dictatorship

(1964-1985). It was founded by the groups leading Brazil’s democratizing struggle at the

grassroots level: the militant labor movement known as the “new unionism”, together with the

Catholic and Marxist left.

For the PT during the 1980s and 1990s, the possibility of winning national power did not

come primarily from the party brand, but from the popular appeal of founding leader, Lula da

Silva. Prior to the PT’s formation, Lula was the leader of the São Bernardo Metalworkers' Union,

which organized and spearheaded the new unionism. In the late 1970s, the “new

unionism…established itself at the forefront of the democratic opposition forces” (Sluyter-

Beltrão 2010: 4), and Lula became the national face of the grassroots democratizing movement.

During the PT’s early years, Lula’s coattails substituted for a strong partisan brand. “It

was recognized,” Keck (1992) writes, “that the party had to include Lula to get off the ground”

(81). Lula “enjoyed more societal support than the party” (Hunter 2010, 3), and thus, “all PT

30

candidates depended on Lula's electoral performance.”38 Lula’s coattails generated a degree of

cohesion as well. Although the heterogeneous PT “confronted enormous difficulties to become

consolidated as a political pact in the 1980s,”39 party members coordinated around the goals of

electing Lula governor of São Paulo (in 1982) and, subsequently, president of Brazil (in 1989

and 1994). In the words of radical PT leader Hamilton Pereira, “the PT achieved an elevated

standard of discipline and unity of action. In large part generated by the expectation to elect Lula

president…” (de Moraes and Fortes 2008, 270).

Like Cárdenas, Lula was not merely externally appealing; he was also internally

dominant (Hunter 2010, 3, 36, 122).40 When asked in an interview with the author what

conditions facilitated the PT’s successful development, PT activist and historian, Lincoln Secco,

responded that the PT was fortunate to possess, in Lula, a leader with “external and internal

charisma.”41 Lula’s internal dominance came from multiple sources. First, in virtue of his

humble origins, class status as a worker, and leadership role in the PT’s founding labor and

democratizing struggles, Lula had unmatched moral authority within the PT. The early PT's

animating narrative cast the party as the first authentically popular political expression in Brazil's

history. The PT's São Paulo-based nucleus of new union leaders, led by Lula, a manual laborer

who had lost a finger in a metalworking accident, incarnated this founding myth. The São Paulo

unionists—and Lula in particular—made the PT narrative credible and provided the higher

cause, or collective incentive, that motivated early members. “The Sao Paulo nucleus acted...as a

symbolic amalgamation, providing the collective incentives fundamental to party-building. In

38 Author's interview with Lincoln Secco, Winter 2009-2010. 39 Interview with PT founder Hamilton Pereira, quoted in de Moraes and Fortes (2008, 270). 40 Hunter (2010) argues that the PT benefited from “the existence of a single leader who enjoyed both a strong presence within the party and popularity with the electorate” (Hunter 2010, 3). 41 Author's interview with Lincoln Secco, Winter-Summer 2010.

31

particular, the charismatic figure of Lula, the ‘maximum leader,’ was the party-building project's

main source of identification and unity” (Ribeiro 2010, 251).

Notably, even PT radicals, who often criticized Lula’s ideological moderation, respected

his background and therefore accepted his leadership. “However much the left might criticize

what it called his vacillation, it recognized that Lula was still the authentic working-class leader

par excellence…” (Keck 1992, 81). In an interview with the author, Frei Betto observed that

even when leaders of the PT’s radical tendencies disagreed with Lula, they rarely spoke out

publicly against him.42 More broadly, the PT’s radical factions never questioned Lula’s

leadership, despite the fact that he clearly led the party’s dominant moderate bloc.43 Most

tellingly, Lula’s candidacy for the presidency of the PT in 1993 met with “overwhelming internal

consensus” despite the fact that the PT’s most extreme left tendencies had, just months earlier,

taken control of the national party (Hunter 2010, 122).

Lula also had strong crossfactional ties. Before the PT’s founding, the São Bernardo

metalworkers’ union constituted “the principal hub of the new unionism” (Sluyter-Beltrão 2010:

3) which in turn constituted the hub of the grassroots democratizing movement of the late 1970s.

Thus, by the time of the PT’s formation, Lula had developed productive, working relationships

with leaders of all the PT’s main feeder organizations, from rural, industrial and middle-sector

unions to Catholic leftists to Marxists and student groups. As PT leader, “Lula was always one of

the few ‘glues’ between the factions, above them all, unifying the party,”44 and he acted as the

central negotiator and guarantor of agreements within the party (Rodríguez 2010, 208).

His inclusive, nonconfrontational leadership style reinforced these crossfactional ties.

Lula “put himself above the factions in various ways” and refrained from explicitly “taking

42 Author’s interview with Frei Betto, Summer 2010. 43 Author’s email conversation with Pedro Ribeiro, April 8, 2012. 44 Author's email conversation with Pedro Ribeiro, April 8, 2012.

32

sides.”45 For more than a decade following the PT’s founding, he did not formally join or

directly participate in any party faction (de Azevedo 1995, 154), instead authorizing aides—

primarily José Dirceu—to advance his agenda and “use the iron fist when necessary.”46 Lula

also consistently abstained from contentious internal votes. Lula never supported the expulsion

or silencing of opposing factions47 and rarely entered into direct conflict with ideological

opponents. On the contrary, like most major PT leaders, Lula explicitly embraced the PT’s

ideological diversity. In a retrospective interview, radical PT leader Hamilton Pereira extolled

Lula and other moderates for their inclusivity, and for defining the PT very clearly, at the outset,

as a political rather than ideological pact (Pereira 2008, 264).

Lula ideologically represented most of the PT base. Lula, a new unionist and never a

Marxist-Leninist, was—and was widely known to be—a relative moderate, despite his inclusive

and indirect leadership style.48 In contrast to the PRD rank-and-file, which predominantly

belonged to the party’s radical wing, the PT rank-and-file, drawn primarily from the union

movement and secondarily from the Catholic left (Secco 2011, 49; Author), predominantly

belonged to the party’s moderate wing. Marxist organizations, the PT’s third major feeder

category, composed the bulk of the PT’s radical wing but did not provide a large social base.

These were small, vanguardist networks, many having engaged in “clandestine activity since the

1960s” (Ribeiro 2010, 186). In 1991, only ten percent of PT members belonged, or had

belonged, to Marxist organizations of the “extreme left” (Secco 2011, 48). Moderate factions

45 Author's interview with Lincoln Secco, Winter 2009-2010. 46 Author’s email conversation with Pedro Ribeiro, April 8, 2012. 47 In an unprompted interview statement, founding PT member and São Paulo municipal councilor, Antônio Donato, emphasized stated that the early PT was the most viable electoral vehicle on the left, but also that Lula succeeded in creating a strong center without “squashing the [minority factions]” (Author’s interview, Spring 2010). 48 See Keck (1992), Hunter (2010), Ribeiro (2010), Secco (2011), all passim.

33

consistently won internal PT elections and controlled the national party apparatus during the

party’s initial decades, save for one brief period (1993-1995).

Lula’s electoral indispensability, ideological representativeness of the PT base,

crossfactional ties and moral stature among both moderates and radicals made him internally

dominant. Lula anchored the PT’s dominant bloc from the early 1980s onward. In 1982, the PT’s

founding nucleus of São Paulo new unionists joined with a diverse range of allies and created the

Articulação tendency, which positioned itself in the PT’s ideological center. Articulação won

every internal PT election until 1993 and, after a brief period of radical control (1993-1995),

regained power in alliance with the Radical Democracy tendency, under the new Campo

Majoritário label. Without the backing of Lula, its “symbolic” leader (Secco 2011, 93),

Articulação and its successor groups could not have dominated the PT. The legitimacy of

Articulação derived from the working-class origins, record of struggle, and also ideological

representativeness of its leaders, above all Lula (Keck 1992, 116).

The main purpose of forming these dominant coalitions was to limit the influence of the

radical left. New unionists and their allies created Articulação in order to “restrain the activity”

of the Marxist tendencies and “maintain hegemony” over them, as radicals, in their view, had

exercised undue influence on the PT’s development from 1980 to 1982 (Ribeiro 2010, 186, 187;

see also Hunter 1992, 114, 118-119, 121; Secco 2011, 123). Similarly, the founders of Campo

Majoritário (est. 1995) conceived the tendency as an instrument for institutionalizing moderate

control of the PT following the radical left’s two-year stint in control of the party, and Lula’s

unexpected, resounding defeat in the 1994 presidential election. They succeeded, ultimately

transforming the PT into a center-left electoral-professional party that would hold the presidency

from 2002 until 2016 (Hunter 2010).

34

Importantly, however, even when Lula’s faction was not in control of the PT (1993-

1995), Lula used his external appeal and internal clout—his “electability” and “popularity among

petistas”—to force the radical-dominated national executive committee in a more moderate

direction (Hunter 2010, 3, 122; see also 6, 36, 120-126). The “moderating influence” of Lula

made the 1994 campaign significantly less radical in its “program, tone and tactics” than it would

have been (Hunter 2010, 120). Lula went outside formal party channels to build relationships and

alliances to the PT's right, and, however begrudgingly, the radical PT leadership granted him this

leeway (Hunter 2010, 121-122).

Lula secured the PT’s presidential candidacy by overwhelming internal consensus on five

occasions (1989, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2006). He did so despite the fact that, in the lead-up to the

1994 presidential election, the radical left controlled the national executive committee, and, in

1998 and 2002, Lula’s image of electoral prowess had been tainted by presidential defeats. For

the 1994 presidential election, leaders of the ruling radical bloc did not propose, or apparently

even contemplate, an alternative candidate to Lula. Indeed, not once did Lula face an internal

contest for the PT’s presidential candidacy.

In short, Lula da Silva’s combination of electoral indispensability and internal dominance

proved critical to the rise and survival of the PT. In addition to making the party electorally

viable as it was building its brand, Lula was able, amid considerable internal heterogeneity, to

anchor the PT’s dominant coalitions, shape internal debates in his own favor, periodically

impose his agenda, and secure the PT’s presidential candidacy with virtually no internal

opposition on four occasions prior to winning the presidency.

During the first two decades of the 21st century, the PT became Brazil’s most successful

party. At the national level, the party finally “adapted,” embracing macroeconomic orthodoxy

35

and modernizing its campaign tactics.49 These adaptations paved the way for Lula’s 2002

presidential victory and enabled the PT to follow Lula’s 2002 victory with repeat victories in

2006, 2010, and 2014. Since 1994, the PT has regularly won 10-20% in the lower house of

congress, and it currently holds numerous governorships. Although recently removed from

power, and despite a substantial drop in partisan identification since 2013, the PT remains, by

far, Brazil’s most institutionalized party. Its internal democracy has long been consolidated, and

because of its brand, much stronger than that of any other Brazilian party, the PT’s long-term

cohesion and electoral viability are unlikely to come under threat. The PT should remain a major

national contender in Brazil for decades to come.

Conclusion Despite the evident significance of party leaders for party building, existing scholarship

on new parties tends to ignore or downplay the role of leaders. Consequently, the relationship

between leadership type and party building outcomes—particularly in its positive variants—

remains undertheorized. Given the weakness of party systems in much of the developing world

and the importance of institutionalized party systems to democratic stability and quality, this

relationship merits serious research. The current article is an attempt to contribute to that

research.

The article has argued that a particular category of leader—one who combines external

appeal with internal dominance—facilitates successful party-building. Without popular leaders,

the PT, PRD and IU may never have attained national electoral prominence or, in some cases,

even been born. And if the popular leaders of the PT and PRD had not been internally dominant,

they might have gone the way of the IU, splitting instead of surviving intact. In their initial years, 49 Samuels (2004); Hunter (2010).

36

the PT, PRD and IU were all heterogeneous fronts, with weak brands that made them electorally

dependent on their leaders. All three parties’ leaders helped to discourage elite defection through

the provision of coattails, but only those leaders who combined outward popularity with internal

dominance (Lula, Cárdenas) managed to keep their parties intact during the fragile formative

period.

To be sure, multiple factors can facilitate new party survival. While this article has

emphasized the role of externally appealing, internally dominant leaders, other potential factors

include lack of access to media and the state, which paradoxically creates incentives for new

parties to build strong organizations (Mainwaring and Zoco 2007; Author), and contexts of

intense polarization and conflict, which generate cohesion by binding together party members

and raising the social cost of defection (LeBas 2011; Author).

Importantly, none of these early facilitating conditions lasts forever. Externally

appealing, internally dominant founding leaders die, retreat from active involvement or even

defect (e.g., Cárdenas in 2014). Generative episodes of intense polarization and conflict

eventually end or subside. Parties that begin without access to media and the state later gain

access (e.g., the PT and PRD). After the formative period, parties develop new sources of

stability. As the cases of the PT and PRD illustrate, successful parties, over time, typically build

strong brands and organizations (Author). These assets guarantee parties high electoral floors

and the concomitant spoils of office. They enable parties to remain electorally viable, provide

external incentives against defection, and generate the patronage resources necessary to attract

new activists and retain the services of old ones.

In short, the conditions for party survival change over time. Ultimately, strong brands and

organizations are critical. But in the beginning, electoral viability and internal cohesion typically

37

must come from somewhere else. This makes externally appealing, internally dominant leaders a

precious asset for many new parties.

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