Centralized Control and Weak Social Roots. The Territorial Expansion of the PRO Partyin Argentina

Abstract

The subnational path can be crucial for party building in adverse contexts. However, the specialized literature has scarcely addressed these processes. We study the expansion of Propuesta Republicana (PRO) in Argentina, from its district of origin in the City of Buenos Aires to two districts of the Province of Buenos Aires —with dissimilar socio-demographic characteristics— in which PRO achieved electoral success (Quilmes and Pergamino). We show that PRO expanded by penetration: it preserved the party brand and the centralization of power in the hands of the ruling coalition, maintained high degrees of coordination and a programmatic alignment among its elites, but at the cost of a weak organizational development and weak social roots in the new districts. We use data from a mixed methods study and apply latent class analysis.