Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T07:52:48.718Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An ‘Organised Disorganisation’: Informal Organisation and the Persistence of Local Party Structures in Argentine Peronism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2001

STEVEN LEVITSKY
STEVEN LEVITSKY
Affiliation:
Harvard University.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article attempts to fill the void in research on the Justicialista Party (PJ) organisation. Challenging accounts of the contemporary PJ as a weak, personalistic organisation, it argues that the party maintains a powerful base-level infrastructure with deep roots in working- and lower-class society. This organisation has been understated by scholars because, unlike prototypical working class party structures, it is informal and highly decentralised. The PJ organisation consists of a range of informal networks – based on unions, clubs, NGOs and activists' homes that are largely unconnected to the party bureaucracy. These organisations provided the government of Carlos Menem with a range of benefits in the 1990s, particularly in the realm of local problem-solving and patronage distribution. Yet they also constrained the Menem leadership, limiting its capacity to impose candidates and strategies on lower-level party branches.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 1 , February 2001 , pp. 29 - 65
Copyright
© 2001 Cambridge University Press

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Research for this article was made possible by grants from Fulbright-Hays and the Social Science Research Council. I am grateful to Javier Auyero, Frances Hagopian, David Samuels and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier drafts.