This book makes very important, original contributions to the study of conservative party-building in Latin America since the 1980s. James Loxton focuses specifically on a subset of conservative political parties: ‘authoritarian successor parties’ (ASPs), parties ‘that emerge from authoritarian regimes but that operate after a transition to democracy’ (p. 2). He contrasts the longer-term electoral success of two conservative ASPs, Unión Demócrata Independiente (Independent Democratic Union, UDI) in Chile and Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Nationalist Republican Alliance, ARENA) in El Salvador, with the shorter trajectories of two conservative parties without close ties to prior authoritarian regimes, Unión del Centro Democrático (Union of the Democratic Centre, UCEDE) in Argentina and Partido de Avanzada Nacional (National Advancement Party, PAN) in Guatemala. All four of these parties were formed between 1981 and 1984.
Loxton demonstrates that UDI and ARENA entered democratic electoral competition with two important advantages based on their authoritarian-regime origins. First, both parties drew on an ‘authoritarian inheritance’ in the form of an identifiable party brand; clientelist networks capable of mobilising lower-class electoral support; a substantial territorial organisation rooted in the preceding regime's social programmes (Chile) or rural paramilitary alliances (El Salvador); and sources of party finance. Second, both UDI and ARENA were shaped by the ‘counter-revolutionary struggle’ in which they engaged during their early histories. In Chile, UDI originated in mortal opposition to memories of the 1970–3 Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) government, headed by Salvador Allende, and the Socialist and Christian Democratic parties. Similarly in El Salvador, ARENA's founders strenuously opposed the 1979 reformist military Junta Revolucionaria de Gobierno (Revolutionary Governing Junta), and their party identity was strongly reinforced by later bipolar electoral contestation with former armed-Left opponents in the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, FMLN). Legacies of counter-revolutionary struggle, Loxton maintains, created a strong sense of identity (mística) among both party leaders and members. This contributed significantly to internal party cohesion, which for a sustained period constituted an antidote against debilitating political schisms. In combination, Loxton persuasively argues, these two advantages made UDI and ARENA the most successful new conservative parties founded in Latin America during the period between 1978 and 2010.
The author effectively employs a research design featuring both ‘most similar’ (Argentina–Chile, El Salvador–Guatemala) and ‘most different’ (Chile–El Salvador) paired country comparisons. In outlining overall similarities and differences among these four cases, Loxton makes reference to electoral institutional arrangements, which are often a principal focus of research on political party systems and the incentives for (or obstacles to) political parties’ electoral success. They are especially relevant in the case of Chile, where outgoing government officials in the military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet created a binomial electoral system as an institutional subsidy for rightist parties. Under the binomial system in effect until 2017, unless the party list obtaining majority support won twice as many votes as the second list, one candidate from each list was seated in each two-member legislative district or constituency. Therefore, in the rivalry between the majority centre-left Concertación Democrática (Pact for Democracy) and the rightist Renovación Nacional (National Renovation, RN)/UDI coalition that dominated Chilean electoral politics for well over two decades, the binomial system in effect equalised legislative representation between the two contending blocs.
Loxton notes that the binomial system did play a substantial role in sustaining schism-prone RN, Chile's second conservative ASP. However, he maintains that it was not a major factor behind UDI's electoral attainments. He is no doubt correct that UDI's closer identification with the Pinochet legacy, its significantly greater internal cohesion, and its privileged capacity to draw on municipal-level personal political networks dating from the dictatorship were all elements making it relatively less dependent on an institutional subsidy. Yet given that winning at least 10 per cent of the votes cast in five consecutive legislative elections is Loxton's principal measure of ASP success, it would certainly be worthwhile exploring in historical detail both where and how UDI won its initial legislative victories in the years after Chile's democratic transition. The binomial system, as well as such institutional arrangements as gerrymandering of electoral districts, could well have made an important early contribution to building the party's national legislative presence.
One puzzle that this book does not fully resolve concerns how electorally successful conservative ASPs managed the historical ‘authoritarian baggage’ (p. 51) associated with the severe, extensive human-rights violations often committed by the military-dominated regimes from which they originated. Although Loxton does not discuss this issue in the chapter on Guatemala, PAN operated in an ethnically segmented society in which enduring memories of genocide against the Mayan population could well have constrained an elite-based party from building cross-class support and expanding its electoral base outside Guatemala City. He does note that UDI fared well electorally despite its enthusiastic embrace of the Chilean military's ‘liberating action’ on 11 September 1973 and Pinochet's legacy. It would, however, be helpful to know more about what specific campaign and media strategies the party employed in this regard, particularly after Pinochet's arrest in London in 1998 for internationally condemned human-rights crimes.
Loxton frames his research questions broadly in terms of key debates regarding party-building and electoral politics in Latin America during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The four country case studies are based on an extensive examination of primary and secondary materials, and the author admirably supplements those materials with interviews with conservative party leaders (cited simply as ‘national UDI leader’, ‘former PAN leader’, and so forth) in Argentina, Chile, El Salvador and Guatemala. Labelling the interviewees more precisely would have avoided ambiguity concerning the number and the position of the individuals whose views Loxton solicited (did he interview the same ‘national UDI leader’ on the different dates cited, or do different dates indicate interviews with more than one national UDI leader?). The interviews are, nonetheless, invaluable for the insights they offer into party leaders’ motivations, their perceptions of foundational events in the histories of conservative ASPs, and the challenges that conservative political parties face when engaged in multiparty democratic electoral competition.
