Conservative Party-Building in Latin America

Reviews / Votes

The author provides four painstakingly researched chapters offering historically rich narratives on the successes of the ARENA and UDI parties and the struggles of their Argentine and Guatemalan counterparts. This is comparative political science at its best. * Russell Crandall & Britta Crandall, Survival * This is comparative political science at its best. * Survival: Global Politics and Strategy * Democracies need strong conservative parties. But in the modern era, strong conservative parties are hard to build. Loxton's book uncovers a surprising but important path to party-building. This is simply the best book on the Latin American Right that I have read. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of party-building, not only in Latin America but worldwide. Anyone interested in political parties should read it. * Steven Levitsky, David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government, Harvard University * Loxton patiently unveils the mechanisms of continuity in a subset of conservative parties that prospered paradoxically in democratic politics as unapologetic heirs of authoritarianism. His book is a counter-intuitive, masterfully-crafted, and field-defining study of conservative party development and Latin American politics. * Edward L. Gibson, Professor of Political Science, Northwestern University, and author of Class and Conservative Parties * In this extraordinarily bold, original, and persuasive study, Loxton reckons with the uncomfortable conclusion that the most successful parties of the political right in contemporary Latin America grew out of the dictatorial past. Conservative Party-Building in Latin America sheds light not only on the Latin American right but also on the dynamics of party building more broadly. It is a study holding lessons that promise to withstand the test of time. * Wendy Hunter, Professor of Government, University of Texas, Austin * This is an excellent book with a clear argument about how seemingly-defeated authoritarian political forces manage to survive and stay relevant after transitions to democracy. The book comes with a transparent, well-justified case selection. Loxton presents a wealth of historical data on parties that are understudied-this alone will provide readers with hard-to-find information on an important part of Latin America's party history. * Javier Corrales, Professor and Chair of Political Science, Amherst College and author of Fixing Democracy * This book is a landmark not only in the study of party-building, but also in the study of authoritarianism's enduring legacies for democratic rule. Loxton provides an original and compelling explanation of variation in conservative party-building in Latin America, examining both successful and unsuccessful cases in Chile, El Salvador, Argentina, and Guatemala. His comparative insights demonstrate why conservative parties born under authoritarian regimes and forged in counterrevolutionary struggles inherit built-in organizational advantages that allow them to compete-and even return to power-in democratic settings. * Kenneth Roberts, Professor of Government, Cornell University * I strongly recommend the book to whoever needs to realize that authoritarianism and democracy are not discrete opposite poles, black and white realities in politics. * Julian Castro-Rea, Journal of Development Studies * Loxton's book advances not only clear concepts and operationalizations but also a powerful theoretical framework that emphasizes the crucial role of two causal variables behind the success of new conservative parties in the region: authoritarian inheritance and counterrevolutionary struggle. * Crist? obal Rovira Kaltwasser, Latin American Politics and Society * This book makes very important, original contributions to the study of conservative party-building in Latin America since the 1980s...Loxton frames his research questions broadly in terms of key debates regarding party-building and electoral politics in Latin America during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. * Kevin J. Middlebrook, Journal of Latin American Studies * Loxton provides an interesting account of right-wing party development and survival, with rich narratives of different cases that help explain why certain right-wing parties endured while most did not. His idea stems from an insight from Di Tella's 1971 work, which argues that a rightist party is important for democracy because then property owners and businesses will hesitate to turn to the military to solve their issues with leftist or populist governments. The author makes use of careful comparison across four conservative parties in Latin America, two of which have survived and flourished and two that did not. * Joy K. Langston, Latin American Research Review * This book represents a much-needed contribution to the study of the political right in Latin America, especially concerning conservative party-building in a region where the right faces significant structural constraints (Zanotti and Roberts 2021). Moreover, this argument has the potential to explain the party-building of non-conservative authoritarian successor parties in other contexts. * Lisa Zanotti, Party Politics * This book is an important and well-researched book that makes a wonderful contribution to understanding the survival of conservative authoritarian successor parties in Latin America. * Carew Boulding, Perspectives on Politics * I strongly recommend the book to whoever needs to realize that authoritarianism and democracy are not discrete opposite poles, black and white realities in politics. In the real world, we find different shades of gray, a continuum between different types of authoritarian and democratic regimes. * Julian Castro-Rea, The Journal of Development Studies *