Party Cohesion, Congruence, and Foreign Powers: Latin American Views About China and the United States

While Latin America's parties suffer from notoriously incongruent relations between legislators and voters, we use mass and legislator-level surveys to show that many parties’ voters and/or legislators coalesce around a singular view about the United States and China. The data indicate frequent congruence between the two levels, and in most of those cases, attitudes towards both countries are positive. Presuming that policies towards the superpowers are not valence issues, this suggests that attitudes towards the powers do help to structure party politics, although the rivalry between the powers is seldom salient. In explaining the correlates of intra-partisan agreement, we focus on ideology, party system structuration, and economic ties. Among the findings is that because attitudes towards the United States are more likely to polarize the left and right, China has extra potential for growing its support. A warning, however, is that legislators in several rightist parties do share a negative perspective about China.