The Rise of Outsiders in Latin America, 1980–2010

One of the most significant developments in Latin American democracies since the beginning of the third wave of democratization is the rise to political prominence of outsider candidates in presidential elections. I use an original database of political outsiders in Latin America to examine the institutional factors that contribute to the emergence of political outsiders. Using a fixed effects variance decomposition (FEVD) model, I find that, in addition to the favorable conditions already identified in the literature—legitimacy crisis of traditional political parties and negative socioeconomic conditions—the rise of political outsiders is determined by institutional factors, such as nonconcurrent elections, compulsory voting rules, and reelection provisions.