This chapter uses data from the Dataset of Parties, Elections, and Ideology in Latin America (DPEILA) to understand the recent rightward move being seen in many party systems within the region, as well as the subsequent process of party-system polarization. The authors argue that major economic downturns favor radical, antisystem alternatives, thereby creating an opportunity for newly created parties to campaign on extreme policy platforms. They also demonstrate that polarization increases when leftist incumbents are associated with progressive policy change, as right-wing parties have become more ideologically extreme. This indicates that the left turn of the 2000s has at times favored the radicalization of important sectors of the right.

This chapter explains why right-wing strategies of adaptation and survival had varying degrees of success during and after the left turn. It argues that right-wing parties were most likely to survive and remain competitive in national elections when they relied on strong party brands and organizations. These strong party brands and organizations depended, in turn, on when the parties were founded and whether they had roots in an authoritarian regime.

This introductory chapter presents the puzzle of the variation in agrarian elites’ capacity to organize electoral representation across Latin America after the third wave of democratization and discusses the consequences of this variation for redistributive politics. It summarizes the book’s central argument that agrarian elites’ strategies of political influence are explained by two factors: the perception of an existential threat and the level of intragroup fragmentation. Then, it discusses the relevance of that argument for the comparative politics literature, in particular regarding the relationship among economic elites’ representation, democratic consolidation, and redistribution. The chapter also offers background about a series of structural and political transformations that have changed agrarian elites’ sources of power in Latin America over the last six decades and describes my research methods, case selection strategy, and data sources.

The chapter presents the setting in which the FA was born and in which it developed over the years. The combination of the exhaustion of the ISI model, increasing political polarization and the height of the Cold War dramatically determined the political dynamics of the late 1960s and 1970s and engendered a context of increasing authoritarianism and political violence. The fight against increasingly repressive governments was a significant incentive for the new party. Public opposition to the neoliberal agenda of the different governments that succeeded the authoritarian regime (1971–1985) also contributed to the FA’s increasingly successful electoral. In 2005, the FA gained office and won three consecutive national elections with an absolute majority in parliament. It was one of the most successful parties of the so-called “left turn.” During its time in government, the party enacted structural reforms in various policy areas. In terms of socioeconomic reforms, the FA approved a tax reform, a health-care reform, and was one of the two parties of the “left turn” that enacted deep labor market reforms. The FA also pursued a distinctive progressive agenda in the region that led to the legalization of abortion, same-sex marriage, and the liberalization of cannabis use.