When confidence in political parties plummets, independent candidacies flourish. In context of party system collapse, some political outsiders that have assumed positions of power have been successful in dividing their respective countries between their followers and their oppositions. Although they lack well-organized political parties, their political projects have been able to solve conventional collective-action and social-choice challenges. Their followers are articulated around some issue-positions and/or ideological appeals. The rise of Fujimorismo in Peru, Uribismo in Colombia, and Chavismo in Venezuela have challenge the established literature on political-citizens linkages: these personalized projects have been able to connect to voters not only around charismatic appeals, but also around programmatic considerations. I offer a personalistic-programmatic linkages theory to understand political cleavages based on positive and negative identities in Latin America. Based on original survey data conducted in Peru, Colombia and Venezuela, I show how personalized politics have developed followings and oppositions (without parties) based on ideological considerations that shape political positive and negative identities. The analysis of fujimoristas versus anti-fujimoristas, uribistas versus uribistas, and chavistas versus anti-chavistas sheds light on how personalized politics can conquer the hearts, minds and guts of individuals, and the consequences for shaping political arenas without institutionalized political parties.
