Pathways to Nationalization in Multilevel Presidential Systems: Accounting for Party Strategies in Brazil and Argentina

Past comparative research has argued that presidential systems may impose a constraint on parties' ambitions in the presence of presidential coattails: if a party intends to become a large national organization, then it must be able to effectively compete for the presidency. In this article, we argue that this is not necessarily the case in multilevel presidential countries. Some parties, in fact, nationalize through "presidentialization," tying the party's fortunes in lower level elections to presidential candidates' performance. However, in the absence of a competitive presidential candidate, adapting to local electoral markets to maximize performance in gubernatorial races across a wide number of provinces may be the most effective path to nationalization. We rely on statistical analyses of party strategies in two presidential countries with strong federal institutions—Brazil and Argentina—to show that parties in multilevel presidential countries can pursue distinct but equally effective paths to nationalization.