In the post-2016 U.S. presidential campaign era, the need to develop a deeper understanding of the dynamics, evolution, and impact of electoral campaigns is even more urgent than before. Presidential Campaigns in Latin America thus comes at a perfect time and makes a valuable contribution to the field of political science. It not only offers a theory that sheds light on the dynamics of three Latin American countries, Chile, Peru, and Brazil, but also provides a useful theoretical framework for the study and comparison of any presidential race.

As Taylor Boas correctly mentions, the academic work on electoral campaigns (with the exception of the scholarship on campaign financing) is limited, insufficient, and lacking in comparative theoretical depth. Much of the common knowledge in the literature and media focuses on the claim that there has been a process of Americanization of the electoral campaign models used across the world. However, little comparative work has been done to support this assertion. Boas offers us a different conclusion. His contribution lies specifically in two aspects: the conceptualization of the dimensions on the basis of which scholars could classify any electoral campaign, and the building of a theory of how electoral campaigns evolve over time.

According to Boas, three dimensions shape political campaign strategies: cleavages, linkage, and policy. Cleavages, defined as “the fundamental lines of division in society that form the bases of political identity and have historically structured competition among parties and candidates” (p. 4), can be primed or not during the campaign. The candidates also have different options in terms of channels of mobilization. The linkage dimension of the electoral strategy is represented by the degree of “organizational mediation” (p. 6). This dimension can span a range from direct connection between the candidate and the voters to a significant reliance on the intermediation of unions, churches, and other organizations. Finally, the campaign strategy can vary as to the type of policy preferences made. Each electoral campaign analyzed can thus be assigned a score for each of these dimensions.

Boas argues that the electoral strategies shaped by these dimensions evolve across time in any country. In particular, they follow a convergent pattern based on the type of electoral strategy used in the first election after a democratic transition. The author, who calls this phenomenon “success contagion,” claims that contrary to received wisdom, dynamic features of the system, not structural characteristics, shape presidential campaigns: “[M]ajor candidates, regardless of ideological orientation, are likely to adopt the first victorious campaign strategy subsequently legitimated by a successful term in office for the elected president” (p. 18).

This theory contains important elements that are worth unpacking. First, it underlines the importance of the democratic transition phase. Often studied and analyzed in comparative politics, the transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one gains a new, fundamental role in this theory. The strategy used after the transition in the first democratic elections, if successful and if followed by a successful government, becomes the benchmark for best practices, and the candidates running subsequent campaigns will slowly converge toward this strategy.

A second important component of the theory is the fact that a victory in the first election is not a sufficient condition for triggering the convergence; rather, a “successful term in office for the elected president” (p. 18) is also necessary. This means that the campaign consultants and candidates who choose the electoral strategy will include in the evaluation of previous strategies not just what concerns the campaign itself but also the entire government experience and the approval of the president. If we ponder the implications of this aspect of the theory, we can see how this also defines how we think of voters’ behavior. It assumes that voters would not be convinced by a previously successful campaign if it was followed by an unsuccessful government, that voters would recognize the strategy used earlier by a failing president and reject it.

Finally, an interesting element of this theory is the role, or more precisely the lack thereof, played by ideology. The process of campaign strategy convergence goes beyond partisanship and happens regardless of it. Boas shows examples of convergence from the right to the left (Brazil) and vice versa (Chile). He notes that this is due to the time elapsed since the elections of reference: “Looking across the ideological spectrum for an example of how to campaign is more natural in the second election after democratization than in the seventh. Thus, there may be a limited window of time in which success contagion can occur in any country before a pattern of inward-oriented reactions is set in place” (pp. 23–24).

The book also represents a significant methodological contribution to the literature. Boas provides the reader with an outstanding example of qualitative research design built on intensive fieldwork. The theory is constructed inductively from two cases of success convergence, Brazil and Chile, and one of inward-oriented reaction, Peru. The author gathered data from various media sources, and conducted semistructured interviews and participant observation during the 2005–6 electoral cycle. The theory is then tested on other cases in two different ways—by testing on electoral campaigns that took place after the years of fieldwork in each of these countries, as well as on comparative cases through the use of secondary sources: Argentina, Benin, Ecuador, Ghana, Honduras, Mali, Nicaragua, the Philippines, South Korea, and Uruguay. Seven out of these 10 cases support the author’s model of convergence, while the three exceptions—Ecuador, South Korea and the Philippines—can be reconciled through the well-defined scope of the theory itself, which works best “when there is a broad organizational continuity over time—the same candidates, parties, or political coalitions competing in most elections” (p. 27), and it is “most applicable to countries that have recently experienced transition to democracy [where] actors can choose freely among alternative strategies” (p. 27).

Finally, Presidential Campaigns in Latin America makes the reader reflect on the impact of political campaigns’ strategies on the quality of democracy—a causal relationship that is, in my opinion, often underestimated in today’s political world. Boas shows how the type of electoral strategy chosen shapes the type of government that the elected president will lead, not just in terms of policies but also in terms of accountability and responsiveness to the citizenry. As he writes at the very end of the book: “By explaining how politicians approach the public in a bid for their support, and why they do so differently in different national contexts, we ultimately gain a better understanding of three fundamental aspects of politics—the relationship between elites and citizens, the role of societal division versus national unity, and the policy agendas” (p. 211). This relationship is the key to possible future research that this book may spur: What combination of elements in a given electoral strategy become limitations on the elected president’s agenda? What combination influences the level of government accountability the most? How heterogeneous is this impact across institutional and political differences? All of these questions are brought to the fore by this important book.