Democracy, Radicalization, and Political Agency in Latin America

Abstract

This article integrates the empirical findings of four quantitative studies to analyze the consequences of political radicalization to Latin American democracies. The first section of the paper defines and operationalizes the concept of radicalism. The following sections explore the consequences of radicalization among the government and the opposition for the survival of elected governments and of the democratic regime; the capacity of radical governments to undermine political competition in periods of fast economic growth, and the consequences of institutional erosion and polarization for regime instability. The evidence presented in the paper calls for reassessing the role of political leadership and its agency to understand the future of the region.