Kevin Lucas
Associate Professor of Political Science at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio. Former lecturer/VAP at the University of Minnesota, SUNY-Geneseo, Lycoming College, and the Universidad de El Salvador. Peace Corps Volunteer in El Salvador (2001-04). PhD from the University of Minnesota, M.A. (International Studies) from the University of Denver, B.A. (International Studies) from Emory University. Interested in Latin American politics (with an emphasis on Central America), party system development and party-voter relations, and economic development.
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Papers by Kevin Lucas
of party system development in twelve Latin American democracies identifies early
socioeconomic development and substantial prior democratic experience as preconditions for the
development of programmatic political competition. However, an analysis of Americas
Barometer and Latinobarómetro survey data finds evidence that programmatic party-voter
linkages are stronger in El Salvador – one of the region’s poorest countries, and a country with
scant democratic history – than in any other Latin American democracy. This unexpected finding
presents a robust challenge to the standard “sociological” model of party system formation. How
can we explain the development of programmatic party-voter linkages in El Salvador? Drawing
on survey data, party documents, and in-country interviews, I argue that the development of
programmatic party-voter linkages in El Salvador is the result of deliberate decisions made by
the country’s two main political parties to emphasize their ideological distinctiveness and to
create political institutes designed to educate/indoctrinate party supporters. This finding echoes
Torcal and Mainwaring’s (2003) analysis of the development of Chile’s party system in the post-
Pinochet era in pointing to the important (and often overlooked) role elite political agency plays
in determining the nature of party-voter linkages.
primary school located in Ecuador’s predominantly black Chota Valley. The eight white teachers who work at this
school conduct themselves in a manner that is so unprofessional that their motives are called into question – are these
(white) teachers truly dedicated to providing their (black) students with an adequate education? The teachers’
unmotivated and inadequate performance, their failure to include cultural education in the school curricula, the racist
misinformation found in the textbooks used at the school, and the suspicion that the national education ministry
intentionally sends the worst teachers to black communities all suggest that the school's performance may be poor by
design.
of the Brazilian party system. Using discriminant function analysis of 20
years of surveys of Brazilian legislators, we find that the party system now
exhibits relatively little coherence. Though the Worker’s Party (PT) is clearly
distinct, no clear ideological differences exist between the placement of the
system’s three other main parties. Moreover, the spatial distance between the
PT and the other parties is diminishing over time. Given the importance of a
coherent ideological map to any consolidated party system, we question the
notion that the Brazilian party system has gradually consolidated. Indeed,
our results suggest the opposite: in recent years the Brazilian party system
has become relatively more “inchoate.”