Resilience and disruption in Latin America’s third wave

I contrast the regime successes and failures in Latin America and use them to develop and test a statistical model of democracy. This model builds on recent research into causal sequences driving democratization that help us understand the sources of the resilience or fragility of democratic regimes. I emphasize the “protective belt” of vibrant civil society, the rule of law, and institutionalized parties that work to stabilize political regimes. Here, however, I add three additional factors: polarization, populism, and anti-pluralist parties. I find that polarization and anti-pluralist parties are, as expected, harmful for electoral democracy. Populism, however, becomes harmful only when combined with anti-pluralism. The three components of the protective belt work together to maintain whatever level of democracy a country has, but the rule of law emerges as the most crucial component. This analysis incorporates insights from other work that emphasizes agency and proximate factors, to balance the more structural approach in the earlier work.