Party and party system collapse and the erosion of democracy are intertwined in Latin America. The downfall or decline of traditional parties in Venezuela, Bolivia, Perú, Ecuador, and Colombia opened the door to anti-systemic mavericks and outsiders like Hugo Chávez (1999–2013), Evo Morales (2006–present), Alberto Fujimori (1990–2000), Rafael Correa (2007–17), and Alvaro Uribe (2002–10) who endangered and—in most cases—broke down democratic regimes across the region. The demise of traditional well-established political parties and the authoritarian pushback that followed are the most important political transformations in Latin America since the third wave of democracy.
In their books, Samuel Handlin and Jennifer Cyr analyze these two related phenomena. Cyr examines the conditions under which political parties survive or reinvent themselves after party system collapse. Handlin studies the variations in the rise and electoral success of anti-systemic left-wing leaders, as well their consequences for regime and regime change.
Cyr and Handlin approach their outcome of interest by focusing on similar variables: the resources available to political actors and their ability to deploy them successfully in different settings. The rise of left-wing outsiders like Chávez (pp. 57–100), Morales (pp. 176–88), and Correa (pp. 189–200), their ability to polarize, and their success in undermining democratic institutions, Handlin argues, are the outcome of state crises and strong left-wing mobilization infrastructures. In Venezuela, he explains, Chávez exploited a context of weak governance and distrust of institutions to polarize society across an establishment/antiestablishment divide (“polarizing populism”; pp. 41–44). Using the resources afforded by professional, well-structured left-wing organizations, the Venezuelan president was able to leverage this divide to win elections and undermine democratic institutions. Handlin argues that the erosion of democracy in Venezuela (pp. 137–63) stands in contrast to the strengthening of representative democracy in Brazil (pp. 163–71), Chile (pp. 204–13), and Uruguay (pp. 213–20), which had strong left-wing infrastructures but did not suffer state crises, and the weakening but still surviving polyarchy in Paraguay (pp. 224–29) and Perú (post-Fujimori) (pp. 229–40), both of which experienced state crises, but did not have strong left-wing organizations to support populist outsiders.
Similarly, for Cyr, the ability of parties to survive (capture high vote shares in subnational elections or receive extensive media coverage; pp. 51–54) and revive (recover national political influence; pp. 54–55) after party system collapse depends on the type of resources they possess and the opportunity its leaders have to take advantage of them. Low-cost resources—material (money and patronage) and elites (party elites or leaders)—are easy to attain, but depend on electoral success (pp. 42–46). Cyr argues that parties that rely on these types of resources, such as Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) and Acción Democrática Nacionalista (ADN) in Bolivia (pp. 185–92) and Partido Popular Cristiano (PPC) in Perú (pp. 119–32), are ill equipped to survive national electoral crises. High-cost resources—organizational (militants, professional staff, or committees) and ideational (ideology, brand, and experience)— on the contrary, are harder to build, but are less susceptible to electoral outcomes (pp. 101–11, 45–47). Cyr suggests that parties reliant on this type of resources, such as Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (APRA) and Acción Popular (AP) in Perú (pp. 119–32) or Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (COPEI) in Venezuela (pp. 160–68), are better equipped to survive national electoral crises.
Unlike the connection between resources and survival, the relationship between resources and revival is mediated by context. To be revived, Cyr argues, a party must have resources that match the postcollapse competitive landscape. In atomized systems, in which leaders rely on personal rather than party reputations, ideational resources are more useful than organizational ones (p. 66). In Perú, APRA was able to use its brand to rebuild Alan García’s reputation in the 2001 presidential election (pp. 132–42). In regionalized systems, where new parties have localized strongholds, organizational resources are more useful than ideational ones (pp. 66–67). In Venezuela, AD used its national infrastructure to become an “influential coalitional partner” (p. 170) in the opposition coalition, Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD; pp. 168–71). Cyr does not provide clear expectations for hyper-fluid systems, which are characterized by high extra- and within-system volatility: both organizational and ideational resources may be useful depending on the situation (pp. 67–68). In Bolivia, the ideational resources that allowed MNR to survive as a participant in the public debate, were, for instance, insufficient to revive the party after the national electoral crisis (pp. 192–95).
Neither the analysis of party and party system collapse nor the study of democratic backsliding is a new topic in political science or Latin American politics. Handlin and Cyr, however, approach these subjects from new angles, and both books make important theoretical and methodological contributions.
Most scholars have analyzed the “pink tide”—the wavelike rise of left-wing presidents in Latin America—from structural, institutional, and international perspectives. The rise and diversity of left-wing outsiders, academics have claimed, stem from the economic crisis of the 1980s and 1990s and the implementation of market reforms (see Kenneth M. Roberts, Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era, 2014); the rise of commodity prices (see “Natural Resources Boom and Institutional Curses in the New Political Economy of South America” in Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America, 2013); weakly institutionalized party systems (see Scott Mainwaring, “Party System Institutionalization, Predictability, and Democracy,” in Latin American Party Systems, Institutionalization, Decay and Collapse, 2018); and/or diffusion from neighboring countries (see Steven Levitsky and Kenneth M. Roberts, “Latin America’s ‘Left Turn’: A Framework for Analysis,” in The Resurgence of the Latin American Left, 2011). Handlin moves past these explanations. He bridges state-centered and organizational variables to outline the circumstances under which left-wing leaders are able to leverage anti-systemic strategies to win and reshape democratic institutions. Although weak governance and a lack of institutional legitimacy lurk in the background of many explanations of party system collapse and democratic erosion (see Larry Diamond, “Facing up to the Democratic Recession,” Journal of Democracy, 26[1], 2015; Jason Seawright, Party-System Collapse: The Roots of Crisis in Perú and Venezuela, 2012), Handlin is the first to explicitly outline and test the mechanisms by which they operate.
Similarly, although scholars have analyzed party building (see Steven Levitsky et al., “Introduction: Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America,” in Challenges of Party-Building in Latin America, 2016) and party system collapse (see Jana Morgan, Bankrupt Representation and Party System Collapse, 2011), Cyr gives the question a new twist. She does not seek to unveil the causes of either of these phenomena, but rather explores why existing parties (fail to) survive national electoral crises. Her analysis bridges the aforementioned literature with debates regarding what a party is and how to measure its strength. Unlike most analyses in comparative politics, which focus almost exclusively on electoral outcomes, Cyr follows the literature on the United States and conceptualizes parties as organizations that operate both in the electorate and in public opinion. With that in mind, she rethinks party strength. Resources are commonly mentioned to understand party building (see Adrienne LeBas, From Protest to Parties: Party Building and Democratization in Africa, 2011); however, Cyr goes further and unpacks the concept. She differentiates the type of resources that parties have, what they need to attain these resources, and the specific purposes these resources serve.
The Fates of Political Parties and State Crisis in Fragile Democracies stand out methodologically as well. Handlin’s use of process tracing is very rigorous. Although comparative historical analysis can and is often used interchangeably for theory building and theory testing, Handlin separates these two objectives. He developed most of his hypotheses before collecting data and then used process tracing to assess them. To do so, he outlined three causal mechanisms and drew explicit hypotheses for every step in each one of them. He then assessed these hypotheses with data (empirical observations) and used process tracing tests – “hoop,” “straw in the wind,” “doubly decisive,” and “smoking gun” – to evaluate the strength of his evidence. Handlin’s book is an excellent example of how scholars can improve transparency in qualitative methods.
Cyr’s methodological contributions are equally impressive. Her book is a prime example of mixed-methods research. She measured organizational resources using expert surveys and interviews, and ideational resources using secondary sources, interviews, and, most notably, focus groups. The last methodology, an increasingly popular technique in political science, allowed her to measure abstract resources, such as branding. She triangulated the collected data to maximize measurement accuracy.
Notwithstanding their methodological and theoretical contributions, Cyr’s and Handlin’s books have some shortcomings. Although Handlin’s book relies heavily on the existence (or lack) of left-wing mobilization infrastructure, that infrastructure is never properly defined and seems, at points, tautological. In Brazil, for example, the strength of the Left manifests in the Worker Party’s (PT) electoral success (pp. 102–5). In Venezuela, on the contrary, it manifests in the existence of experienced left-wing professionals, regardless of the fragmentation and extensive electoral losses of the left-wing parties Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) and La Causa R (pp. 58–61). Similarly, in Uruguay and Chile, the strength of the Left is measured at the party level, whereas in Ecuador and Bolivia it is measured at the grassroots social movement level. Are all of these “Lefts” equally powerful? What type of resources did each leader tap into? To what extent did the availability of different types of resources shape subsequent regime outcomes? The theory outlined in The Fates of Political Parties seems particularly well posed to answer some of these questions.
Cyr could also have benefited from Handlin’s work. Although all of the cases in her book deal with party system collapse followed by severe backsliding and even regime change, unlike Handlin, she ignores regime dynamics in her analysis. Electoral competition in Perú, Venezuela, and Bolivia became increasingly unfair after Fujimori, Chávez, and Morales, respectively, came to power. Parties in these contexts faced a shortage of low-cost resources particular to competitive authoritarian regimes. It is unclear how the uneven access to resources and the media, or the manipulation of electoral rules, affected the availability of other resources or parties’ opportunity to use them. National electoral crises need not lead to democratic erosion: What happens when parties and party systems face significant transformations, but access to the media and electoral resources does not change? Would that modify the resource calculation? Would that make some resources more likely to promote survival (and/or revival) than others?
Party and regime dynamics have been closely related in Latin America. The books analyzed here provide both interesting theoretical insights and pose provocative questions to further analyze these phenomena.
