ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the patterns of party competition and the sources of political cleavages in many of the countries. The emphasis is on Latin America, it provides a comparative analysis that includes advanced industrial societies and emerging democracies of the post-Communist world. The book provides evidence that in many new democracies a democratic-authoritarian dimension of conflict constitutes the single most important political cleavage. It shows that left-right ideologies and class play important roles in defining issue positions. The book argues that theories of party competition and party strategies are limited because they are based on purely theoretical assumptions about the distribution of voters in democracies. It provides evidence that shows the actual empirical distribution of voters in advanced industrial democracies, suggesting that both ideology and class are important determinants of the positions that voters take on the issue dimensions that define political cleavages.
