Democratic political parties with a history of commitment to statist economic policies face internal stresses when they come to power and preside over programs of wholesale economic liberalization. How do such parties and coalitions avoid splintering and manage to maintain electoral support? Examining the recent experiences of Argentina and Mexico, Edward Gibson suggests that one can understand these achievements by treating each party as a combination of two separate components performing distinct functions: a (metropolitan) policy component and a (peripheral, or rural) electoral component. His framework travels well beyond Latin America, and helps illuminate the different politics underlying three recent waves of economic liberalization in Sri Lanka.
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