Other Attempts at Conservative Party-Building in Latin America

2021 ◽  
pp. 188-216
Author(s):  
James Loxton
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Armed Groups ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Third ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Potential Alternative

This chapter examines a number of other high-profile attempts at conservative party-building in Latin America. The first section examines RN in Chile, the PFL/DEM in Brazil, ADN in Bolivia, and Fujimorismo in Peru. Like the UDI and ARENA, all four were authoritarian successor parties; unlike the UDI and ARENA, however, they did not emerge from intense counterrevolutionary struggles and all faced serious problems of cohesion. The second section examines the Party of the U in Colombia, arguing that it was the “exception that proves the rule,” given its ties to violent armed groups. The third section considers four potential alternative paths to conservative party-building: (1) opposition to authoritarian regimes, (2) corporation-based parties, (3) the subnational strategy, and (4) conservative fusion. It discusses the viability of each by looking at several high-profile historical cases, and considers the implications for new conservative parties that cannot yet be definitively scored, notably the PRO in Argentina.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
James Loxton
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
New Right ◽  
Fourth Section ◽  
The Third ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Potential Alternative ◽  
To Come

This introductory chapter presents the central puzzle of the book and sets the stage for the chapters to come. The first section defines the terms “conservative party” and “party-building.” The second section discusses the rise of the “new right” in Latin America during the 1980s. The third section presents data on new conservative parties formed in the region between 1978 and 2010. It highlights the puzzling fact that all of the successful cases (e.g., UDI in Chile, ARENA in El Salvador) were authoritarian successor parties, while those with more democratic origins (e.g., UCEDE in Argentina, PAN in Guatemala) failed. The fourth section briefly lays out the book’s argument about authoritarian inheritance and counterrevolutionary struggle. The fifth section considers potential alternative explanations. The final two sections discuss research design and provide a road map for the rest of the book.

A Theory of Conservative Party-Building

2021 ◽  
pp. 33-54
Author(s):  
James Loxton
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Powerful Source ◽  
The Third ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Antecedent Conditions ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Latin America Countries ◽  
Two Independent Variables

This chapter lays out the book’s theory of conservative party-building, emphasizing two independent variables: (1) authoritarian inheritance and (2) counterrevolutionary struggle. The first section examines the challenges of conservative party-building in contemporary Latin America. The second section discusses the concept of authoritarian inheritance, arguing that authoritarian regimes can endow their partisan successors with a range of valuable resources. The third section discusses the role of counterrevolutionary struggle, arguing that intense struggles to preserve the existing order from a government perceived as an existential threat can serve as a powerful source of cohesion. The final section asks why conservative authoritarian successor parties emerged in some Latin America countries but not others, showing that this can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy by looking at three simple antecedent conditions.

Conservative Party-Building in Latin America

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Loxton
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Theoretical Contribution ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Party Cohesion ◽  
Democratic Stability

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.

Authoritarian Inheritance, Political Conflict and Conservative Party Institutionalisation: The Cases of Chile and Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
André Borges
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Political Conflict ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Violent Conflict ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Party Building ◽  
Party Development ◽  
Political Right

Abstract Party development in post-transition Latin America has often proceeded unevenly, as right-wing elites opted for non-partisan forms of political action and conservative parties remained poorly institutionalised. Recent research has demonstrated that party-building was facilitated where the political Right benefited from valuable political assets – party brand, territorial organisation, sources of funding and clientelistic networks – inherited from authoritarian regimes. This article argues that authoritarian inheritance in isolation is insufficient to foster conservative party institutionalisation. It analyses the trajectories of the major right-wing parties in Brazil and Chile, where former authoritarian incumbents benefited extensively from authoritarian inheritance and yet levels of institutionalisation differed widely across parties. The comparative analysis demonstrates that right-wing parties were most likely to consolidate where, in addition to inheriting valuable resources from the dictatorship, they experienced ideologically driven, violent conflict during their early years.

scholarly journals The Politics of the Senate Reform Reference: Fidelity, Frustration, and Federal Unilateralism

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 623-672
Author(s):  
Adam Dodek
Keyword(s):  
Political Action ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Party Politics ◽  
House Of Commons ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Third ◽  
Minority Government ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Court Of Appeal

References are the most political of cases, almost always involving high profile public policy issues. Frequently, references are brought to obtain rulings on the relationship between the federal government and the provinces. Less frequently, references involve questions of interbranch relations, that is, between two or more of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government. The Senate Reform Reference was one of the rare cases that featured each of these three elements. This article analyzes the Senate Reform Reference on several political levels. First, it situates the reference in terms of megaconstitutional politics, the long-held Canadian practice of attempting to resolve constitutional issues through formal and often high-profile negotiations between the federal and provincial governments. Such interactions have been anathema to the Harper government which has preferred unilateral political action to negotiated political agreement. The article then examines interparty politics or the relationship between the Harper government and the opposition parties during the period of minority government (2006–2011). This is the period during which one would have expected the government to bring a reference because of its inability to obtain support from the other parties in the House of Commons and the Senate for its proposed legislation on the Senate. However, it did not. This leads to an examination of the third issue: intra-party politics or the politics within the governing party, the Conservative Party of Canada. Finally, the article discusses legal politics and how the government of Québec essentially forced the federal government’s hand by bringing its own reference to the Québec Court of Appeal. The overarching framework of interbranch politics—the relationship between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government—is examined throughout the article.

O CINEMA DO TERCEIRO MUNDO SOB O OLHAR DA ANTIGEOPOLÍTICA: DITADURA E RESISTÊNCIA NA AMÉRICA LATINA

GEOgraphia ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (42) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Rejane Cristina de Araujo Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Third World ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
The Third ◽  
World Cinema ◽  
America Latina ◽  
The Third World

Resumo: Filmes do Cinema de Hollywood são representativos de um imaginário geopolítico hegemônico. A este imaginário contrapõe-se uma antigeopolítica identificada nas representações de filmes do Cinema do Terceiro Mundo. Partindo de importantes contribuições da geografia política crítica que apontam para articulações entre as representações geopolíticas e os filmes, analisamos três filmes que retratam a América Latina em um dos períodos mais conturbados da sua história. Sua análise nos revela elementos característicos de uma geopolítica de resistência durante as ditaduras civil-militares implantadas no Brasil, no Chile e na Argentina.Palavras-chave: Antigeopolítica. Cinema. América Latina. Ditadura. THE THIRD WORLD CINEMA UNDER THE ANTIGEOPOLITICS VIEW: DICTATORSHIP AND RESISTANCE IN LATIN AMERICAAbstract: Hollywood film movies are representative of a hegemonic geopolitical imaginary. This imaginary contrasts with an antigeopolitics identified in the Third World Cinema representations. Based on important contributions from critical political geography that points to articulations between geopolitical representations and movies, we analyze three cinema productions that portray Latin America in one of the most troubled periods of its history. That analysis reveals elements of a geopolitics of resistance related to the civil-military dictatorships implanted in Brazil, Chile and Argentina.Keywords: Antigeopolitics. Movies. Latin America. Dictatorship. EL CINE DEL TERCER MUNDO BAJO LA VISIÓN ANTIGEOPOLÍTICA: DICTADURA Y RESISTENCIA EN AMÉRICA LATINAResumen: Películas del Cine de Hollywood son representativas de un imaginario geopolítico hegemónico. A este imaginario se contrapone una antigeopolítica identificada en las representaciones de películas del Cine del Tercer Mundo. A partir de importantes contribuciones de la geografía política crítica que apuntan para articulaciones entre las representaciones geopolíticas y las películas, analizamos tres películas que retratan la América Latina en uno de los períodos más revueltos de su historia. Su análisis nos revela elementos característicos de una geopolítica de resistencia durante las dictaduras implantadas en Brasil, en Chile y en Argentina.Palabras clave: Antigeopolítica. Cine. América Latina. Dictadura.

scholarly journals A ‘Suitable Soil’: Plague’s Urban Breeding Grounds at the Dawn of the Third Pandemic

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christos Lynteris
Keyword(s):  
Modern Medicine ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Scientific Investigations ◽  
The Third ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
Breeding Grounds ◽  
Major Outbreak ◽  
Urban Terrain ◽  
Scientific Debates

A pressing question during the first half-decade of the third plague pandemic (1894–9) was what was a ‘suitable soil’ for the disease. The question related to plague’s perceived ability to disappear from a given city only to reappear at some future point; a phenomenon that became central to scientific investigations of the disease. However, rather than this simply having a metaphorical meaning, the debate around plague’s ‘suitable soil’ actually concerned the material reality of the soil itself. The prevalence of plague in the working-class neighbourhood of Taipingshan during the first major outbreak of the pandemic, in 1894 in Hong Kong, led to an extensive debate regarding the ability of the soil to harbour and even spread the disease. Involving experiments, which were seen as able to procure evidence for or against the demolition or even torching of the area, scientific and administrative concerns over the soil rendered it an unstable yet highly productive epistemic thing. The spread of plague to India further fuelled concerns over the ability of the soil to act as the medium of the disease’s so-called true recrudescence. Besides high-profile scientific debates, hands-on experiments on purifying the soil of infected houses by means of highly intrusive methods allowed scientists and administrators to act upon and further solidify plague’s supposed invisibility in the urban terrain. Rather than being a short-lived, moribund object of epidemiological concern, this paper will demonstrate that the soil played a crucial role in the development of plague as a scientifically knowable and actionable category for modern medicine.

scholarly journals Three Waves of Populism in Latin America

2014 ◽  
pp. 153-160
Author(s):  
O. V. Varentsova
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Import Substitution ◽  
Third Wave ◽  
Political Regimes ◽  
Political Transitions ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
The Third ◽  
Neoliberal Reforms ◽  
Hugo Chavez

Contemporary political regimes in Venezuela and Bolivia led by late Hugo Châvez (now by his successor Nicolas Maduro) and Evo Morales are considered by foreign and Russian scholars as part of the third wave of populism. In the 20th century Latin America already witnessed two waves of populism which coincided with significant political transitions, namely a transition from oligarchy to mass politics accompanied by implementation of import substitution industrialization policies, and a transition from authoritarian rule to democracy during the third wave of democratization which triggered neoliberal reforms inspired by Washington Consensus. This article presents common characteristics of Latin American populist regimes that emerged in different historical periods which help identify the origins as well as distinctive features of Venezuelan and Bolivian political regimes. It is stated that the Châvez and Morales left populist regimes resemble classic populist regimes in that they rely on incendiary anti-establishment discourse. Therefore, left populist regimes are characterized by high levels of polarization as well as weak institutionalization and class or indigenous orientation. Election of left populist leaders may lead to institutional deadlock, uneven playing field and transition to competitive authoritarianism.

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