How Party Activism Survives

Verónica Pérez Bentancur, Rafael Piñeiro Rodríguez, Fernando Rosenblatt

"Political parties with activists are in decline due to various external shocks. The emergence of new technologies of communication diminished the role of activists and their numbers. Party elites increasingly can make do without grassroots activists, however, recent scholarship concerning different democracies has highlighted the fact that activism still matters for representation. This book contributes to that literature by analyzing a unique case: the Uruguayan Frente Amplio, (FA) the only mass-organic institutionalized leftist party in Latin America. This case study highlights the value of an organization-centered approach for understanding party role in democracy in the twenty-first century. Within the FA, organizational rules grant activists a significant voice, which imbues activists' participation with a strong sense of efficacy. This explains activists' willingness to invest...