Rethinking Latin America’s Left Turn

A Historical and Theoretical Approach

Paul Posner, Paul W. Posner

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822992356
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Around the turn of the century, a wave of leftist governments spread across Latin America. Paul W. Posner revisits this movement and diagnoses the reasons for its failure to achieve traditional leftist goals, such as reducing inequality, increasing inclusion of marginalized groups, and strengthening social solidarity. He investigates two sets of paired comparisons of paradigmatic cases: the moderate leftist regimes of Chile and Uruguay and the radical leftist regimes of Ecuador and Venezuela. He then compares their rhetoric with their actual practices and policies. Too often, these governments betrayed their self-avowed principles. Posner identifies the shortcomings in the conceptualizations used to understand this pink tide, provides the conceptual and empirical basis for challenging the established thinking regarding leftist governance in Latin America, and constructs the foundation for rethinking what an authentic left turn in Latin America might look like.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• INTRODUCTION: Rethinking Latin America’s Left Turn
• Chapter 1. The Contradictions between Participatory Democracy and Populism
• Chapter 2. Venezuela under Chávez: Populism for the Twenty-First Century
• Chapter 3. Correa’s Buen Vivir: The Rhetoric of Participatory Democracy, the Reality of Rentier Populism
• Chapter 4. Comparative Analysis: RentierPopulism, not Radical Leftism, under Chávez and Correa
• Chapter 5. Distinguishing Social from Neoliberal Democracy
• Chapter 6. Chile’s Neoliberal Democracy
• Chapter 7. Uruguay’s Pursuit of Social Democracy under the Frente Amplio
• Chapter 8. Uruguay’s FA and Chile’s Center-Left Compared: Social versus Neoliberal Democracy
• Conclusion: A New Framework for Assessing the Left in Latin America
• Notes
• References
• Index
• Backcover Page