Latin America's Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings is a well-written, empirically grounded and thought-provoking edited collection organised by Steve Ellner. It offers a systematic analysis of left and centre-left governments during the first decade of the twenty-first century. With a foreword written by Boaventura de Sousa Santos positioning progressive governments as representatives of ‘los de abajo’, the book has 13 chapters divided into four sections. The contributions, by scholars from North and South, highlight similarities and differences in the institutional and structural contexts of these governments.

One of the merits of the book is that it scrutinises how Pink Tide governments combined political pragmatism with both ideological and programmatic strategies for pursuing social change, with varying degrees of success. The different chapters focus on how and to what extent popular-based progressive governments advanced with post-neoliberal reforms and distributive policies for overcoming ingrained social injustices. A key message is that left governments fell short of radical programmes and they did so to retain power, but this strategy proved inadequate when political and economic conditions deteriorated.

In the introduction, Ellner summarises how, once in office, progressive governments moderated their political position as part of a pragmatic or instrumental strategy to appease right-wing political actors. This type of alliance, either for opportunistic reasons or led by the need to guarantee democratic governance, proved to be detrimental in the long run. Financial capital and large business turned out to be unreliable allies. Also, progressive governments leaned on neo-extractivism and could not break free from commodity-dependent economies. However, these governments still asserted state authority over strategic sectors and used revenues to finance social programmes that improved living conditions of excluded populations.

Part 1 presents a theoretical overview in three chapters. William I. Robinson argues that progressive governments had a conjuncture in which states and social movements could halt and reverse the effects of neoliberalism. But they accommodated market forces instead of redefining property relations, tempted by the gains of neo-extractivism. In turn, this made their political platforms fragile. When commodity prices fell, these governments had difficulties in maintaining redistributive programmes. Their ‘passive revolutions’ had demobilised their social bases although their framing of social problems in terms of justice and redistribution would last beyond their specific administrations.

Part 2 is devoted to the Pink Tide in the Southern Cone. Pedro Mendes Loureiro and Alfredo Saad-Filho explain the income-based policies of the Workers’ Party and how these did not alter the distribution of assets or the tax regime. The progressive government cultivated political alliances with more conservative actors but did not mobilise its own social bases for advancing more transformative policies. At the time President Dilma Rousseff was removed from office, the government had become disconnected from the demands of the population and its political pragmatism had proven counter-productive. Nicolás Bentancur and José Miguel Busquets show that the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) promoted participatory experiences and mobilisation around specific policy issues. These practices institutionalised channels for social decision-making that resulted in laws and regulations. By contrast, macro-economic management and tax regimes remained vertical and technocratic. They conclude that the progressive government in Uruguay did not neatly correspond to liberal nor radical democracy. Instead, it was a hybrid, for it linked both representative and participatory democracy. Mabel Thwaites Rey and Jorge Orovitz Sanmartino assert that Kirchnerism, the progressive government in Argentina from 2003 to 2015, acted independently from bourgeoisie factions. Despite a significant expansion of democratic and social rights, their neo-developmentalist strategy was truncated because of a lack of expansion of the productive system and efforts were insufficient to overcome a commodity-dependent economy. The authors’ final reflection is a critical analysis of state capacities and the risk for progressive governments of becoming trapped in a fragile capitalism.

Part 3 focuses on the ‘radical’ Pink Tide: Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador, nominally committed to socialism and facing opposition from the outset. Ellner examines the paradoxical effects of Hugo Chávez's pragmatic policies in response to the attempts at destabilisation. He argues a recursive cause–effect relationship between the threats of a ‘disloyal’ opposition vis-à-vis pragmatic and conciliatory policies. The main lesson is about the timing of reforms: populist social policies should not exclude systematic efforts towards productivity and economic development. Luis Fernando Angosto-Ferrández brings attention to the continuing electoral support and the motivation of citizens for a better understanding of Chavist political dynamics. The author grounds his analysis on the mining development project Arco Minero del Orinoco as a case of a pragmatic alliance with international capital and a repositioning of corporatist sectors of the state such as the military, with the government as an advocate of the interests of working classes. However, the outcome showed that the government could not overcome either extractivism or rentier capitalism.

Linda Farthing addresses how and why the Evo Morales government's shift to the political centre limited his aims of transforming Bolivian society into a more horizontal and participatory one, despite his electoral triumph of 2009. With a political rather than an economic project of change, Morales’ government achieved substantial social progress, but it also lost opportunities through concessions to the eastern elite and extractive industries, and the overdependency on Morales as a charismatic leader produced centralisation and patronage relations that undermined social mobilisation. Patrick Clark and Jacobo García examine Rafael Correa's political movement Alianza PAIS and the promise of the Citizens’ Revolution. In contrast to reductionist perspectives of Correa's government as ‘technocratic populism’, the authors present a more nuanced picture of his project as populist along with an attempt at state-building as means for strengthening democracy with greater levels of social equality. However, the government remained too focused on state bureaucratic autonomy in detriment of social participation and consultation. The authors raise a key point about Correa's political rhetoric preventing more definitive steps towards the decolonisation of Ecuadorean state and society.

Part 4 is devoted to Nicaragua, El Salvador and Mexico. Héctor M. Cruz-Feliciano examines Nicaragua's Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (Sandinista National Liberation Front, FSLN) and President Ortega's popularity until April 2018 when he ordered the repression of a mass popular uprising. Accused of exercising personalistic power, the governance model appeared inclusive on the surface but did not provide means for effective participation. After three consecutive terms in power, the socio-economic achievements became clouded by limited citizenship and party leadership disengaged from structural social transformations. Hilary Goodfriend studies El Salvador's Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN) that was elected in 2009 for two consecutive terms until 2019. Its capacity to advance a radical social programme was always precarious, even though the FMLN introduced social reforms and invested in vulnerable sectors to an unprecedented degree. The attempts to promote structural redistributive reforms were blocked by elite groups and their representatives in national institutions. John M. Ackerman examines the Mexican election of Manuel López Obrador in 2018. López Obrador sought to transform the political dimensions of neoliberal logic by pursuing a strategy of reconciliation and national unity. Critical of the modernisation narrative, his ‘fourth transformation’ illustrates an eclectic transformative ideology, with reformist and revolutionary dimensions. Ackerman argues that he lacked an essential element for radical transformation: a powerful alliance with social movements for mobilising and defending social justice goals.

I expected more analysis of recognition policies and social rights in general. These innovations are mentioned tangentially (equal marriage in Argentina and women's political parity in Bolivia, for example) with the focus on economic policies, which are undoubtedly central to the Pink Tide wave. However, in a region where social injustices are also structured along gender and race, how these inequalities intersect with political practices are key for analysing radical reforms. The empowerment of socially excluded groups takes more than redistributive policies, as it speaks to processes of cultural transformation of their undervalued social status. Overall, this book is an essential reading for a more thorough understanding of the political dynamics of the region as well as the prospects of the Left.