Resumen

SANTORO., Ignacio. Let’s agree to disagree: Partisan strategies in the Argentinean primary elections. Íconos [online]. 2024, n.79, pp.167-184. ISSN 1390-8065.  https://doi.org/10.17141/iconos.79.2024.5944.

From 2004 to the present, eleven Argentine provinces have had laws on Mandatory Open Simultaneous Primaries (PASO, in Spanish) and have enforced them at least once. Their creation sought to democratize the selection of candidates through mandatory primary elections for political parties and voters. The PASO law has been criticized because political parties come to agreements on single lists of candidates, complying with the mandatory rule but avoiding internal competition. This paper investigates the factors that have influenced the strategies of agreement or dispute within political spaces, based on the measurement of the number of internal lists presented in PASO. To carry out the analysis, an observational study was conducted by examining the strategies of the main political forces in eleven Argentine provinces. Three political-institutional variables were studied: 1) the re-election of the governor, 2) the electoral calendar, and 3) government vs. opposition. The results show that when the governor does not run for re-election and the electoral calendar is split, there are greater chances of internal dispute between more than one list. Likewise, being part of the opposition was not a determining factor for the dispute between two or more internal lists.

Palabras clave : Argentina; primary elections; electoral federalism; subnational politics; candidate selection methods; electoral systems..

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