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Abstract
The consolidation of Argentine democratic politics seems to go along with the decreasing nationalization of party politics. Conversely, the consolidation of democracy in Spain has shown high levels of nationalization for the major political parties. This is intriguing in several levels: Not only due to the fact that Spain is an ethno-linguistically diverse state (which promotes regional parties yet the major political parties seem to be impervious to such an influence), but also because Spain has been experienced a profound process of decentralization that devolved policy authority to regional governments. The conventional wisdom in Comparative Politics claims that voting patterns and party behavior are becoming nationalized around the world. However, nationalization is understood by the specialized literature as the geographical uniformity of party electoral support across districts for national elections. This is the case even though the nationalization of politics is inextricably linked to territorial dynamics. I take issue with the fact that the conventional wisdom rests on exclusively studying national dynamics because it disregards the interaction between national and subnational politics.
This dissertation argues that the sources of nationalization and denationalization in Argentina and Spain are not national in nature. However, in order to elaborate on this, the focus of analysis needs to be broadened to incorporate subnational politics as well as their interplay with national dynamics. The present dissertation hence proposes a new conceptualization (the federalized party system) and a new measurement (the summary measure of congruence) to capture the analysis of party politics in all the electoral arenas. It also advances an original theoretical framework that provides an institutional explanation that connects party territorial organization to party system dynamics. I argue that the similarity and dissimilarity of electoral rules across territorial arenas affect the coordination costs for parties that aim to achieve a national presence and therefore their territorial organizational type. This in turn generates distinct systemic traits at the federalized party system level. In sum, this dissertation casts new light on prevailing assumptions about the competitive patterns of party politics across territory, and provides a territorial-driven explanation for the processes of nationalization and denationalization of party politics.
