Abstract
Recent research points to the importance of subnational elections as variables shaping the national party system in federal states (Jones 1997b; Mainwaring and Shugart 1997; Samuels 2000). I propose that the effects of subnational elections are not limited to federal states but instead can be seen throughout the region. This paper examines the impacts of gubernatorial elections across eighteen Latin American countries during the most recent democratic period. The analysis suggests that intermediate subnational elections do exert an influence on national party systems, whether the state is federal or not, and particularly influence how many parties are elected to a legislature's lower house.