From Re-Democratization to the “Left Turn” and the Far-Right Backlash: Critical Junctures and Cleavages in Ten South American Countries

This paper first presents the main theoretical tenets and results from a book project on polarization and representation in South America, covering the period from the late 19th Century to the 2000s. It then links these historical legacies to contemporary patterns of polarization. Adopting a cleavage approach to party system formation in ten countries, the paper starts out by presenting a model comprising two critical junctures. The first is a bifurcation in the degree to which party systems were able to sustain prolonged ideological polarization from the early 20th Century until the 1970s. Although this legacy was interrupted by authoritarian rule in the 1960s and 1970s, it ultimately contributed to shaping divergent trajectories during Latin America’s “left turn”. The second critical juncture is constituted by the imprint of authoritarian rule, which under specific circumstances resulted in a regime divide pitting defendants of democracy against (tacit) supporters of past military regimes. These theoretical premises and the stylized results derived from the book manuscript will provide the basis for an interpretation of more recent dynamics in the region. Jointly, the historical legacies resulting from these two critical junctures shaped not only the “inclusionary turn” of the 2000s, but also the far-right backlash against it. On the one hand, the breakthrough of radical populist left outsiders during the “left turn” occurred chiefly in countries that had seen historical polarization aborted at the first critical juncture (Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia). On the other hand, the inclusionary reforms enacted by the established left in Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina were met with a far stronger radical right backlash in recent years, in part due to the heavier emphasis that governments placed on gender and minority rights in these countries. The other factor shaping the radical right backlash, I theorize, is the presence of regime divides. Thus, the paper tentatively traces the propensity of regime divides to evolve into a broader new cultural cleavage that pits universalistic positions in terms of gender and minority rights against particularistic positions that defend established status hierarchies and seek to rehabilitate the authoritarian past.