Conservative Party-Building in Latin America Authoritarian Inheritance and Counterrevolutionary Struggle

Voice and Inequality is about conservative parties in Latin America. James Loxton examines parties formed between 1978 and 2010 and tries to understand why some were more successful than others. The main puzzle is the surprising connection between roots in dictatorship and success under democracy. What allowed "authoritarian successor parties" in countries like Chile and El Salvador to succeed, while those with more democratic origins in countries likeArgentina and Guatemala failed? It argues that this was not a coincidence: the former inherited valuable resources from the old regime that helped them to thrive in the new.