Thanks, Rodolfo! Definitely, we have a working paper with @rcastrocornejo.bsky.social on how clientelism can engender positive affects. Paula Muñoz has a great book on clientelism as signals.

For scholars of comparative politics, this highlights the need to study opinion formation in diverse institutional contexts beyond established democracies. 🧵/END.

This research shows partisan categories aren't always central to political reasoning. When parties aren't reliable information sources, citizens find alternative ways to organize their political environment.

2) Affective Polarization Patterns: In Peru, outgroup animosity substantially outweighs ingroup favoritism across multiple measures. Citizens are more motivated to oppose the "other side" than support their own.

Why this asymmetry? Two potential explanations:

1) Low Political Trust: When citizens receive political cues, they face conflicting signals, a shared identity (Fujimorismo/anti-Fujimorismo) from a distrusted source (politicians). This creates cross-pressure that weakens ingroup effects.

But here's the twist: only outgroup cues matter. Exposure to opposing group cues decreases support, but ingroup cues have no positive effect.

This asymmetry challenges core assumptions of the Social Identity Perspective, which emphasizes ingroup favoritism over outgroup hostility.

I conducted a survey experiment with 1,546 Peruvians, randomly exposing them to Fujimorista or anti-Fujimorista cues attached to real policy proposals currently discussed in Congress. Results show that political cues significantly influence policy preferences even without strong partisan brands.

Yet despite these harsh conditions for partisan attachments, Peru has two enduring non-partisan political identities: Fujimorismo and anti-Fujimorismo. These are defined not by party loyalty, but by opposing stances on the country's authoritarian past under Alberto Fujimori.

I test this argument in Peru, an extreme case of party system breakdown. Between 2015 and 2024, Peru had seven presidents, averaging just 1.1 years per president.

I argue that in contexts where party labels do not provide meaningful information, citizens turn to alternative political markers. From this perspective, partisan cueing is just one instance of a broader process: ingroup and outgroup cueing.

We know citizens use partisan cues to understand policy positions. But what happens when political parties are weak, unstable, and deeply distrusted?

In these contexts, parties offer little heuristic value and have limited capacity to shape citizens' political beliefs.