Jennifer Cyr has succeeded in finding a topic related to Latin American political parties that has not yet received much attention. Her interesting topic is the investigation as to which parties, after suffering through a system-level collapse, survive or revive. The book makes an important contribution in recognising that party system collapse does not necessarily mean that all parties die, and it is useful to consider which ones will remain a part of the political dialogue and why. The author codes a party as surviving if, after a crisis, it either competes at the subnational level or continues to be a participant in public (media) debates. Revival means that a party returns to ‘national-electoral relevance’ (p. 3) independently, in a coalition, as a ‘kingmaker’ (pp. 54–5), or through ‘reinvention’ (pp. 79ff). While not a major emphasis, an interesting aside from this approach is that it shows that the post-crisis systems have not become ‘partyless’ (pp. 114–15), as is commonly assumed. Their continuance in the debate and potential for revival at the national level implies a change in how we think about these, focused on the decline of parties in Latin America.

Cyr's argument is, simply, that parties with more resources will be more likely to survive a system-level crisis. She concentrates on ‘organisational’ and ‘ideational’ resources (p. 16), and works to carefully define and measure these concepts. Focusing on close studies of Bolivia, Peru and Venezuela, she uses multiple methods, including extensive interviews and textual analysis of newspapers, to carefully code her cases. These data provide rich discussions of each case, showing how parties transformed or died after the crisis, and the role of the different resources in supporting those that survived.

One problem with her approach is that by focusing only on the post-collapse process, the book evades important questions about the role or value of the resources that protect a party from disappearing in the first place. In particular, if these resources are so important to survival, why are they insufficient to prevent the party from collapsing with others during a crisis? It seems inconsistent, for example, that there can be both a religious-like attachment to the Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana (Popular American Revolutionary Alliance, APRA) among militants (p. 90), but also an almost wholesale abandonment of the party. Further, do parties that lack these resources fail even when the system itself is not in crisis? In other words, how do parties that lack organisational and ideational resources grow and sustain themselves? Another problem is that it seems that the resources do not guarantee that the parties will survive. As an example, while she cites the Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario (Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, MNR) in Bolivia as a party that had significant resources, it was unable to sustain support at the local level after the national crisis.

While it would have been useful to extend the study to look more carefully at the role of the resources during collapse, the book is interesting and useful for its careful case studies and attention to finding means for measuring difficult concepts. Perhaps it is unintended, but another benefit of the book is that it provides grist for institutionalists and a potential critique of the institutionalisation literature. The book uses as its universe of cases those that suffered through a party system collapse, with the presumption that all existing parties suffer at these times as a populist party rides to power. Cyr's book, then, seeks to explain why some of the initial parties survive or revive, and she makes the straightforward claim that more resources help shield a party from death. What goes unstated, however, is that those same resources did not shield the party from the initial collapse any better than the other parties that have fallen during party system crisis. This is a potentially interesting line of research, and could clearly be tied to issues of institutionalisation, a term that she does not emphasise (though she does mention it as a source for her thinking about a party's resources). Her organisational and ideational variables, however, are closely tied to that concept (namely rootedness in society and ideological linkages). Of course, these cases do have one missing element from those considered institutionalised: electoral stability. As such, however, the study suggests that some traits of institutionalisation are insufficient to prevent party or party system collapse. At the same time, since those same traits are apparently important to survival, the book does suggest a value in parties developing ideational ties and societal rootedness. Perhaps it would be interesting to expand her universe of cases by focusing on individual parties that collapse, even if the party system survives. Cases of revival such as the Canadian Conservatives that collapsed in the 1990s or the Spanish Socialists who failed after 2011 would probably support her theory. An alternative approach would be to look at all parties, regardless of the system collapse, and to ask how some are able to prosper in spite of a lack of those resources. Do her findings imply, for example, that parties that appeal to voters without a clearly identified ideology will be less successful or stable?

In sum, Cyr has identified a new niche for the study of political parties in part by calling attention to the fact that some have survived or revived following system collapse. Some of these parties – and she works to predict which ones – maintain relevance within the system, and thus the book modifies our views about Latin American parties and party systems.