Latin America

News

Peru’s Runoff Election: Changing the Menu?

Peru is the regional epicenter of the geopolitical dispute between China and the United States not only for securing access to critical raw material for the energy transition (which are abundant in Peru), but also for supremacy over the so-called backyard. What are the international orientations of the presidential candidates facing the 7 June runoff election?

5.06.2026

Podcasts

How to Secure Democracy After Authoritarianism? Venezuela and the Problem of Credible Transitions

The conversation explores how concepts such as adverse selection and signaling help explain this dynamic, and what it would take for democratic leaders to build trust with key actors. It also introduces a novel framework for transitional justice—one that differentiates between actors based on both responsibility and strategic importance.

11.05.2026

News

Costa Rica’s “Third Republic” and Refoundational Authoritarianism

Costa Rica’s “Third Republic” is not just a political slogan—it is a narrative that turns accountability into obstruction and reframes democratic oversight as a relic of a failed past.

6.05.2026

News

Kast’s “Emergency Government”: Early Signals of Democratic Narrowing from Within

Democratic erosion does not always arrive through rupture. In Chile, early decisions by Kast’s government suggest a subtler process: the gradual narrowing of democracy from within.

15.04.2026

News

In the Name of Freedom: The Dismantling of Decent Work in Argentina

Javier Milei’s recently approved labor reform promises to liberate the Argentine people from the obstacles that constrain their individual prosperity. Yet beneath its façade of freedom, the reform redefines the legal protections that have long safeguarded workers, their well-being, and their environments, as the Agenda 2030’s “Decent Work” Goal demands.

26.03.2026

News

Venezuela and the “Sustainability” Wars Ahead

At the heart of contemporary conflicts lies an often-overlooked reality: Environmental resources are unevenly distributed and governed. As climate change accelerates and ecological limits tighten, struggles over land, energy, water, and biodiversity increasingly shape global politics, revealing the sustainability–peace nexus as a strategic mechanism used to stabilize extraction.

9.01.2026

Podcasts

Benjamin Gedan and Elias French on the Threat to Latin American Term Limits

The desire of leaders to remain in office indefinitely has haunted democracy since its inception. Politicians have found various ways to circumvent democratic accountability and sideline the people’s will for a change in leadership, from military coups to rigged elections or the installation of puppet leaders. One of the most widely used tools to constrain such practices is the establishment of presidential term limits. Many of today’s constitutions impose a limit on the number of times a person can run for office.

5.01.2026

News

The 50th anniversary of Operation Condor’s founding meeting in Chile

Fifty years after South America’s dictators formalized Operation Condor, new research and recent court rulings reveal both the scale of this transnational terror network and the extraordinary persistence required to expose it. Far from being an automatic product of democratization, today’s understanding of Condor’s crimes is the result of decades of mobilization by survivors, families, journalists, lawyers, and judges who challenged impunity across borders.

16.12.2025

Podcasts

How to Resist Illiberalism: Pedro Abramovay on Reimagining Democracy in Latin America

In this podcast, Pedro Abramovay offers a wide-ranging analysis of the rise of illiberal forces in Latin America and the democratic vulnerabilities they exploit.

4.12.2025

News

Democratic Entropy and Transactional Rule: The Political Output of Peruvian Informality

Peru’s democracy is eroding not through aspiring autocrats but through exhaustion. Beneath the turmoil lies a subtler form of decay: entrenched informality hollowing out authority and turning governance into a marketplace of deals rather than a system of rules.

13.11.2025

News

From the Certainty of the Past to the Uncertainty of the Future: Argentina’s Midterms Elections

Argentina’s midterm elections tested not only the government’s ability to sustain its reform agenda but also citizens’ growing preference for results over ideology—a transformation increasingly visible across middle-income democracies.

5.11.2025

Podcasts

Transformations of the Latin American Right: From Pink Tide to Polarization – Part 2

In the second part of our special two-part episode of the Review of Democracy podcast, we continue our conversation with André Borges, Ryan Lloyd, and Gabriel Vommaro. Building on our first discussion of parties, movements, and leaders, this episode turns to the demand side of the region’s political transformation. We explore how voters’ attitudes, cultural conflicts, and deepening polarization are reshaping right-wing politics across Latin America.

25.09.2025

Podcasts

Transformations of the Latin American Right: From Pink Tide to Polarization – Part1

The conversation explores how Latin America’s right has been reshaped since the early 2000s — from the rise of new political parties and movements to the growing role of voters and cultural conflicts. In part one, we focus on the supply side: parties, movements, and leaders redefining right-wing politics in the region. In part two, we turn to the demand side, examining voters, polarization, and the societal forces driving this transformation. Join us as we map out the new generations of conservative and radical right-wing actors that are changing the political landscape across Latin America — and consider what this means for the future of democracy.

22.09.2025

News

The Politicization of Anti-Feminism in Latin America

The growing visibility of anti-feminism in Latin America is not an isolated trend but a deliberate political strategy. In this op-ed, Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser examines how far-right actors harness anti-feminist rhetoric to mobilize voters, resist the expansion of rights, and contest the very meaning of democracy.

4.06.2025

Podcasts

The Right against Rights in Latin America

In this conversation with the Review of Democracy, Professor Leigh Payne, Dr. Julia Zulver, and Dr. Simon Escoffier discuss the development of right-against-rights movements that have grown in numbers, strength, and influence in recent years in Latin America. The discussion draws on their latest book, “The Right against Rights in Latin America,” published by Oxford University Press, in which they show that new anti-rights groups are intent on blocking, rolling back, and reversing social movements' legislative advances by obstructing justice and accountability processes and influencing politicians across the region.

5.03.2025

Venezuela Beyond Elections – Cracking Authoritarianism Through Human Rights

Venezuela is back in the news"—a phrase increasingly heard among journalists, political analysts, policymakers, and others across the globe in recent months. After years of protests, an enduring humanitarian and human rights crisis, and the forced exodus of nearly 25% of its population (7.7 million people, according to the United Nations), Venezuela has also become synonymous with corruption scandals, ongoing investigations in multiple countries, and a relentless political conflict led by an unpopular authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro. Coupled with an economy hampered by various international sanctions, Venezuela, perhaps unsurprisingly, slowly faded into what can be described as "international fatigue." This so-called fatigue can in part be attributed to the perceived failure of various political strategies to effect change or restore democracy, compounded by a world preoccupied with multiple crises, where violent armed conflicts have taken center stage.

16.10.2024