Students and scholars of both Latin American politics and comparative politics will find The Resilience of the Latin American Right of vital interest.

Under what conditions do political institutions develop that are capable of promoting economic and social elites' accommodation to democracy? The importance of this question for research on regime change and democracy in Latin America lies in two established political facts: alliances between upper-class groups and the armed forces have historically been a major cause of military intervention in the region, and countries with electorally viable national conservative parties have experienced significantly longer periods of democratic governance since the 1920s and 1930s than have countries with weak conservative parties. The contributors to this book examine the relationship between the Right and democracy in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador, Peru, and Venezuela during the 1980s and 1990s. The authors focus particularly on the challenges that democratization may pose to upper-class groups; the political role of conservative parties and their electoral performance during these two crucial decades; and the relationships among conservative party strength or weakness, different modes of elite interest representation, and economic and social elites' support for political democracy. The volume includes a statistical appendix with data on conservative parties' electoral performance in national elections during the 1980s and 1990s in these seven countries. Contributors: Atilio A. Borón, Universidad de Buenos Aires • Catherine M. Conaghan, Queen's University • Michael Coppedge, University of Notre Dame • John C. Dugas, Kalamazoo College • Manuel Antonio Garretón, Universidad de Chile • Scott Mainwaring, University of Notre Dame • Rachel Meneguello, Universidade de Campinas • Kevin J. Middlebrook, University of California, San Diego • Timothy J. Power, Florida International University • Elisabeth J. Wood, New York University.

Where do strong conservative parties come from? While there is a growing scholarly awareness about the importance of such parties for democratic stability, much less is known about their origins. In this groundbreaking book, James Loxton takes up this question by examining new conservative parties formed in Latin America between 1978 and 2010. The most successful cases, he finds, shared a surprising characteristic: they had deep roots in former dictatorships. Through a comparative analysis of failed and successful cases in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador, and Guatemala, Loxton argues that this was not a coincidence. The successes inherited a range of resources from outgoing authoritarian regimes that, paradoxically, gave them an advantage in democratic competition. He also highlights the role of intense counterrevolutionary struggle as a source of party cohesion. In addition to making an empirical contribution to the study of the Latin American right and a theoretical contribution to the study of party-building, Loxton advances our understanding of the worldwide phenomenon of authoritarian successor parties--parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy. A major work, Conservative Party-Building in Latin America will reshape our understanding of politics in contemporary Latin America and the realities of democratic transitions everywhere.

The transition to democracy underway in Latin America since the 1980s has recently witnessed a resurgence of interest in experimenting with new forms of local governance emphasizing more participation by ordinary citizens. The hope is both to foster the spread of democracy and to improve equity in the distribution of resources. While participatory budgeting has been a favorite topic of many scholars studying this new phenomenon, there are many other types of ongoing experiments. In Barrio Democracy in Latin America, Eduardo Canel focuses our attention on the innovative participatory programs launched by the leftist government in Montevideo, Uruguay, in the early 1990s. Based on his extensive ethnographic fieldwork, Canel examines how local activists in three low-income neighborhoods in that city dealt with the opportunities and challenges of implementing democratic practices and building better relationships with sympathetic city officials.

How do democracies form and what makes them die? Daniel Ziblatt revisits this timely and classic question in a wide-ranging historical narrative that traces the evolution of modern political democracy in Europe from its modest beginnings in 1830s Britain to Adolf Hitler's 1933 seizure of power in Weimar Germany. Based on rich historical and quantitative evidence, the book offers a major reinterpretation of European history and the question of how stable political democracy is achieved. The barriers to inclusive political rule, Ziblatt finds, were not inevitably overcome by unstoppable tides of socioeconomic change, a simple triumph of a growing middle class, or even by working class collective action. Instead, political democracy's fate surprisingly hinged on how conservative political parties - the historical defenders of power, wealth, and privilege - recast themselves and coped with the rise of their own radical right. With striking modern parallels, the book has vital implications for today's new and old democracies under siege.

What promotes or hinders the development of conservative parties in Latin America? What does this augur for the stable representation of the propertied and socially privileged in political parties? In Class and Conservative Parties, Edward L. Gibson examines these questions in light of Latin America's long legacies of authoritarianism and democratic instability. Gibson explores these questions theoretically, historically and comparatively. He develops an approach to the comparative study of conservative parties that sheds new theoretical light on the social dynamics of party politics. Historically, he traces the determinants of conservative party development in Argentina, providing a rich analysis of how interactions between conservatism's elite "core constituencies," party leaders, and the state shaped the rise and fall of conservative parties in the 19th and 20th centuries. Gibson also presents a comparative examination of conservative party politics in Latin America during the 1980s and 1990s and offers a thoughtful look ahead to conservatism's future in the region.

This book generates a wealth of new empirical information about Latin American party systems and contributes richly to major theoretical debates about party systems and democracy.