Introduction. Presidential campaigning in the decay of political parties
Final report for 21A.506 Presidential campaigning in the decay of political parties Analysis of the situation and proposal of a campaign strategy in Peru Andrei Klishin, MIT Department of Physics May 15, 2014 Contents 1. Introduction........................................................................................................................... 3 2. Chapter 1: Peruvian political and electoral structure............................................................ 5 3. Chapter 2: Political history of Peru – past and future........................................................... 10 4. Chapter 3: Peruvian media review......................................................................................... 19 5. Chapter 4: Proposal of a campaign strategy.......................................................................... 26 6. Conclusions............................................................................................................................ 36 Introduction This report is aimed to provide analysis of the current political situation in Peru, as well as recent and proposed developments. I initially chose Peru practically randomly out of the scope of Latin American countries, but throughout the preparation of parts of this report it proved to be a country with an interesting and puzzling political situation. As would be shown throughout the report, in last 20 years the system of political parties in Peru practically decayed, redeeming any long-term voter loyalty. This means that for any new political rally the correct use of a media campaign becomes of utmost importance. The goal of the report is to produce a proposal for an electoral strategy for a fictional presidential candidate running in next elections in 2016. The strategy needs to be well informed by the history of the country, abide by the existing legal regulations, and be reasonably promising by relying on the appeal approaches that already worked for Ollanta Humala, the current president elected in 2011. This report adopts the structure proposed by the 21A.506 syllabus and builds up to the campaign strategy through four chapters. Chapter 1 is dedicated to the description of the organizational structure of the electoral system in Peru. It explains the structure of government, electoral cycles and regulations, names the current major political parties, profiles the voters in a number of categorizations, and discusses the regulations on financing and media usage of the electoral campaigns. Chapter 2 is a discussion of the recent changes in the political system, its criticisms and the existing discussion of possible further reforms. Chapter 3 is a discussion of the general media usage in the country, as well as its usage by Ollanta Humala in the most recent elections. It contains as well a review of press headlines for April 2014 that provides a list of hot topics to appeal to in the campaign. Chapter 4 brings together all previous information to inform the focus of the new electoral campaign, as well as to develop an appealing image representation of a fictional presidential candidate Luis Quispe. A proposed design of the advertisements is also presented there. A separate bibliography is provided for each chapter, except for the LAPOP report on public opinion in Peru which is referenced throughout the whole paper: Carrión, Julio F., Patricia Zárate and Mitchell Seligson,“Political Culture of Democracy in Peru and in the Americas, 2012: Towards The Equality of Opportunity”, IEP Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, LAPOP, AmericasBarometer, Vanderbilt University, http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/peru/Peru_Country_Report_2012_English_W.pdf I thank the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) and its major supporters (the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations Development Program, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Vanderbilt University) for making the data available. Chapter 1: Peruvian political and electoral structure
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