Why are some Latin American party systems characterized by programmatic politics while others respond to clientelistic or charismatic linkages between parties and voters? What accounts for variation across countries in the region? Are the causes behind programmatic politics found in long-term, slow-moving factors or short-term, institutional factors? These are the main questions that Herbert Kitschelt and his colleagues address in Latin American Party Systems. As the reader may gather from the ambitious title, the book is a bold and impressive contribution to the growing literature on the quality of democracy in the region.

The main focus of the book is the study of programmatic party structuration (PPS), or “the extent to which politicians employ party labels to develop coherent policy alternatives in their public appeals” (p. 3). As the authors convincingly argue early in the book, this dimension is crucial for the quality of democracy since it is a precondition for responsible partisan government. Where PPS is strong and parties represent voters' views, public policies will tend to resemble public goods that benefit large sectors of the population; where PPS is weak, public policies will tend to be particularistic and respond to direct, selective exchanges or charismatic appeals. Thus, PPS enhances the legitimacy and functionality of democratic systems.

The authors embark on a monumental effort to achieve two main objectives: to document differences in PPS across Latin America and to account for this variation. Part I focuses on the first goal by generating quantitative indicators of programmatic party competition across 12 countries based on elite and mass surveys in 1997 and 1998. Part II provides explanations for PPS and discusses correlates and potential consequences regarding the quality of democracy corruption, governance, and support for a democratic system.

The authors find that PPS is strong or present in Chile, Uruguay, Costa Rica, Mexico, Argentina, and Venezuela but weak or absent in the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia (p. 171). They reach this conclusion after a careful evaluation of four main indicators related to programmatic politics: whether there are partisan divides around salient issue bundles (i.e., economy, religion, or regime type), the extent to which a left–right dimension is meaningful, the level of congruence between voters and legislators' views, and the degree of intraparty cohesion around these issues.

The book follows in the tradition of critical junctures and incremental change to explain the region's pattern of PPS. According to the authors, it is a long, gradual process of knowledge accumulation, political learning, and adaptation that leads to programmatic politics. To account for cross-national variation, they organize potential causal factors in terms of capabilities, opportunities, and stakes that are necessary for programmatic politics to emerge. In their view, higher levels of development before World War II, the opening of periods of democratic politics, and the adoption of welfare-state policies—even if limited—covering the urban sectors all combine to play a key role in explaining PPS in the long run.

The book walks a fine line between presenting an alternative to institutional and economic accounts and also incorporating them to explain short deviations from a long-run trend or equilibrium. Although it does not find evidence supporting the emergence of programmatic divides toward the end of the 1990s based on proximate causes, such as economic booms or electoral systems, the authors' explanation makes room for institutional and economic factors to account for the erosion of programmatic politics: “Where long-term regime and political economic developments have favored strong PPS in some Latin American polities, sharply negative short term economic and political conditions may nevertheless erode PPS substantially over the course of a few electoral terms” (p. 10).

However, no positive effect is attributed to these short-term factors in the formation of PPS. Wherever the right conditions were not present early in the twentieth century, favorable political and economic conditions in the 1980s and 1990s did not contribute to programmatic structuration. In this sense, the authors present a gloomy picture in which PPS is a fragile proposition more likely to deteriorate over time than to emerge where proper conditions were not found long ago.

This book sets a high bar in the study of party systems. In addition to developing a theory of programmatic party structuration that seeks to travel across time and place, it maintains a continuous dialogue throughout with other familiar dimensions of party systems, such as polarization and institutionalization. Similarly, it speaks to previous work on programmatic politics in other regions, drawing helpful comparisons with Eastern Europe based on previous work by one of the authors (Herbert Kitschelt et al., Post-Communist Party Systems, 1999.)

Additionally, Latin American Party Systems makes an empirical contribution by providing quantitative indicators for the study of a key dimension of party systems. It assembles a wealth of evidence to show variation across the region and relies on a broad methodological tool kit, including factor analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA), ordinary least squares, and simple correlations. Noteworthy as well is the level of transparency of the study; the authors were careful to leave the scaffolding in place in order to walk the reader through the logic behind the construction of their main PPS index and its correlates.

Perhaps the main criticism of the book has to do with its focus on documenting and explaining programmatic politics at a single, narrow point in time, particularly given its emphasis on “historically deep and enduring” causal factors (p. 12). Anticipating this concern, the authors argue that PPS has remained generally “locked in” (p. 173) and that the snapshot is representative of trends that have changed little over time. Although they recognize that PPS in countries like Bolivia, Brazil, Peru, Uruguay, and perhaps Mexico have likely changed shortly before or after the measurement period, they provide country-specific explanations for recent changes in PPS that are only brief deviations from a long-term dynamic.

This notion of PPS “lock in” could be better reconciled with the book's claim that “PPS tends to be quite fragile” (p. 10), but, in any case, the timing of the snapshot is not ideal. It takes place toward the end of the adoption of neoliberal reforms in the region, arguably the region's most important critical juncture since the adoption of import-substitution industrialization (ISI) and the incorporation of the popular sectors in the early twentieth century. This is exactly the kind of “big stakes of societal reorganization dividing political camps” (p. 185) on which the authors base their explanation, combined with higher standards of living, long periods of uninterrupted electoral competition, and the dismantling of the clientelism-prone ISI model. This combination could very well have altered the party systems' long-term trajectories identified by the authors in the late 1990s. One way to test how representative the pattern of PPS is would be to carry out the coding exercise at different points in time, but the authors cannot be faulted for not doing so; their painstaking effort involved in identifying PPS variation is commendable.

This book is an outstanding piece of scholarship. Readers looking for an alternative to the dominant institutionalist approaches to the study of party systems will find its contributions refreshing. It will surely become a mandatory reference for scholars of Latin American party systems and beyond.