Journal Articles

An empirical stochastic model of Argentina’s Impossible Game (1955–1966)

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Argentine politics from 1955 to 1966 was characterized by the conflict between the Peronists and
the anti-Peronists. While each camp could veto the other’s project, neither could advance their
own agenda. In his canonical interpretation, O’Donnell (Modernization and Bureaucratic-
Authoritarianism. Berkeley, CA: Institute of International Studies, University of California,
1973) concluded that party democracy during this era was tantamount to an ‘impossible game.’
While we recognize the significance of O’Donnell’s analysis, we believe that it presents a
number of problems. To address its main shortcomings we consider a spatial model that
emphasizes the importance of voters’ judgments about the characteristics of party leaders. We
recover the positions of Argentine parties using a mixed logit stochastic model and an original
dataset of recorded votes in the Argentine Chamber of Deputies during this era. Our results
suggest that the electoral logic forced the Peronist party to adopt relatively radical positions away
from the center in order to maximize its support. In turn, non-Peronist parties had little incentive
to seek the support of moderate, and thus ‘unrepresented,’ Peronist voters by locating themselves
at the electoral mean. In particular, valence differences associated with Peronism prevented
larger parties from converging toward the center. We thus conjecture that the rules of the
impossible game were a constraint imposed by the populace on Argentine political elites rather
than a choice made by the latter behind the people’s back.

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Detail Information

Series Title

Journal of Theoretical Politics

Call Number

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Publisher

Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications., 2016

Collation

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Language

English

ISBN/ISSN

0951-6298

Classification

NONE

Content Type

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Media Type

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Carrier Type

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Edition

Volume 28, Issue 2, April 2016; pp. 266–287

Subject(s)

Argentina
agendas
impossible game

Specific Detail Info

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