Voice and Inequality examines attempts at conservative party-building in Latin America over the past several decades, and tries to explain why the most successful new conservative parties all had roots in dictatorship. Voice and Inequality is a comparative study of conservative party-building in Latin America between 1978 and 2010. Its central puzzle is the surprising correlation between authoritarian origins and democratic success. Why did new conservative parties with roots in dictatorship often succeed, while those with more democratic origins failed? The book argues that this is not a coincidence: the successful cases inherited valuable resources from the old regime that helped them to thrive in the new. It develops this argument about authoritarian inheritance through a close examination of two successful cases of conservative party-building (UDI in Chile, ARENA in El Salvador) and two cases of failure (UCEDE in Argentina, PAN in Guatemala). It also highlights the role of counterrevolutionary struggle as a source of party cohesion. In addition to making an empirical contribution to the study of the Latin American right, the book advances our theoretical understanding of the determinants of party-building. It also adds to the growing literature on "authoritarian successor parties," or parties that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy.

Book Information
ISBN 9780197537527
Author James Loxton
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint Oxford University Press Inc
Publisher Oxford University Press Inc
Weight(grams) 156g