Party Systems and Democratic Divergence in Contemporary Latin America

The study of democracy in Latin America’s third wave is necessarily a study in contrasts, given the forking paths of democratic development in the region. Explanations of these forking paths are naturally drawn to an analysis of the diverse ways in which political parties and social movements have constructed alternative democratic orders. Party systems that were programmatically aligned from left to right by democratic transitions and market liberalization have been more stable than those that were de-aligned by the dual transitions of the 1980s and 1990s. They also moderated social mobilization by channeling dissent from market orthodoxy into institutionalized outlets of partisan representation and electoral competition. In the process, programmatically-aligned partisan competition contributed to the construction of democracy as a form of institutionalized pluralism, rather than a plebiscitary expression of popular sovereignty. The latter was more likely to emerge where de-aligned party systems failed to provide institutional outlets for societal opposition to the neoliberal model, thus channeling dissent toward anti-systemic forms of social and electoral protest. Where this occured, new popular majorities could be mobilized that not only swept away traditional party systems, but also transformed or refounded democratic institutions by plebiscitary means.