This work deals with the substantive content of party competition in Latin America through the analysis of party coherence. Party coherence is conceptualized as the degree of ideological and programmatic congruence among the members of a given party. The analysis is bounded to the parliamentary elite level and it is focused on a total of 25 political parties from 10 countries of the region. This paper describes the pattern followed by coherence for those cases, it offers a ranking of political parties based on the values they adcquire regarding both dimensions of the concept (ideological and programmatic), and it explores the impact of some fators, related both to the party and to its environment, on the degree of party coherence.
party coherence; political parties; parliamentary elites; Latin America
