Surviving against all odds: Pachakutik’s electoral support, mobilization strategies, and goal achievement between 1996 and 2019

Doctoral Thesis

The Ecuadorian party, Movimiento Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik (MUPP or Pachakutik), is a 24-year-old party with low levels of electoral support and scarce resources. Conventional theories of party survival cannot explain this party’s persistence. Common wisdom predicts parties with both consistently low levels of electoral support and lack of resources will disband, but Pachakutik does not. Why do parties with low electoral support and few resources persist? This dissertation addresses that question and introduces a theory of party survival that focuses on why parties may choose to survive, change, or disband. Parties can persist if they achieve their primary goal, and this may happen even when a party has scarce resources and low (or fluctuating) levels of electoral support. Parties pursue different primary goals – policy, office, or value-infusion – and, as such, evaluate goal achievement differently (in terms of their own aspiration levels based on prior performance). The...Show moreThe Ecuadorian party, Movimiento Unidad Plurinacional Pachakutik (MUPP or Pachakutik), is a 24-year-old party with low levels of electoral support and scarce resources. Conventional theories of party survival cannot explain this party’s persistence. Common wisdom predicts parties with both consistently low levels of electoral support and lack of resources will disband, but Pachakutik does not. Why do parties with low electoral support and few resources persist? This dissertation addresses that question and introduces a theory of party survival that focuses on why parties may choose to survive, change, or disband. Parties can persist if they achieve their primary goal, and this may happen even when a party has scarce resources and low (or fluctuating) levels of electoral support. Parties pursue different primary goals – policy, office, or value-infusion – and, as such, evaluate goal achievement differently (in terms of their own aspiration levels based on prior performance). The case of Pachakutik illustrates this theory and its mechanisms. This dissertation combines qualitative and quantitative methods of analysis and rests on archival data, interviews, and quantitative data collected during over 11 months of fieldwork in Ecuador.
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Pachakutik

Party survival