Equality as compass: revisiting Norberto Bobbio’s polar star from Latin America

This article reassesses Norberto Bobbio’s claim that equality constitutes the defining ‘polar star’ of the Left and asks whether this framework travels beyond its European origins to Latin America. The article argues that equality remains the Left’s central normative orientation, even when its political vehicles, institutional expression, and distributive results vary, and that Bobbio’s criterion travels as a comparative framework for identifying the Left’s enduring orientation toward reducing inequalities across populist movements, revolutionary projects, and the Pink Tide, and alongside nationalism, anti-imperialism, and distinct organizational forms.