Territorio y poder: nuevos actores y competencia política en los sistemas de partidos multinivel en América Latina, by Flavia Freidenberg and Julieta Suárez-Cao, eds.

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Flavia Freidenberg and Julieta Suárez-Cao, eds., Territorio y poder: nuevos actores y competencia política en los sistemas de partidos multinivel en América Latina. Salamanca: Ediciones Universidad de Salamanca, 2014. Tables, figures, bibliography, appendix, 386 pp.; paperback. There is growing interest in Latin American subnational politics, emerging from earlier waves of interest in “subnational” dimensions. The first wave excitedly celebrated and later evaluated decentralization reforms (mostly at municipal levels) that swept through the region in the 1990s. Much of that work, however, focused on policy “outcomes” and the “effectiveness” of decentralization in tackling longstanding social problems (e.g., poverty, education, health). Another wave explored consequences of “subnational authoritarian” enclaves in otherwise democratic systems, particularly Mexico and to some extent Argentina, and emerged from the quality of democracy literature. It began scrutinizing the relationship between local- and national-level politics, but mostly treated both as distinct political arenas. Only recently have scholars begun exploring the complex, fluid relationships between local and national political arenas. This edited volume is a valuable contribution to the study of the relationship between subnational and national party politics. Although it primarily measures and describes the multilevel party systems covered in the volume, it does so meticulously and with attention to detail. The collaborative project develops a typology of Latin American party systems along two dimensions: “congruence” between national and subnational party systems and predominance of “traditional” parties across the various subnational units. Contributors collected electoral data from subnational units (states, provinces, municipalities), then applied measures laid out in the introductory chapter. Combining both dimensions produces a four-category typology of party systems: congruent-traditional, congruent-nontraditional, incongruent-traditional, and incongruent-nontraditional. The introductory chapter by Julieta Suárez-Cao and Flavia Freidenberg does the heavy lifting, providing the empirical framework and the comparative analysis that brings all the cases together. The “measure of congruence” (17)—originally developed in a 2010 paper by Suárez-Cao and Edward Gibson—complements “party system nationalization” scores. Unlike those scores (based on Gini coefficients of support for parties across subnational units applied to individual parties, then aggregated), the “congruence” index combines information from national and subnational electoral arenas to measure the similarity between the number of parties between subnational units and the national tier. In addition, the editors’ proposed “index of predominance of traditional parties” (19) measures the degree to which “traditional” parties dominate politics across the various subnational units. Simply put, the index takes the number of executive offices (at national and subnational units) won by “traditional” parties and divides that by the number of subnational units plus one. After describing both indicators, Suárez-Cao and Freidenberg map out the cases included in the volume (plus the Dominican Republic) along the two dimen-

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sions. On the basis of country averages of both measures, most countries fit two categories: congruent-traditional (Mexico, Argentina, Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Nicaragua) and incongruent-nontraditional (Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, and Colombia); only two cases (Chile and Costa Rica) fit the incongruent-traditional category. Looking at individual country election years, however, complicates things: several countries are situated in different categories at different points in time. Unlike some edited volumes, this one consistently and faithfully adheres to the framework established in the introduction. This allows readers to pick and choose among the ten country chapters that compose the bulk of the volume. Despite minor variations, each country chapter follows a basic template: overview of the type of subnational levels and the electoral system(s), some historical-political context, and application of the two basic measures discussed in the introductory chapter. The results are individual country chapters that provide excellent primers on national and subnational electoral politics of the countries under review. Readers looking for clearly articulated descriptions of the electoral systems used at the subnational level in any of the countries included in this study are well served. Strictly adhering to analysis only of country-years in which subnational elections were held (thereby excluding country-years before decentralization) gives the project a heuristic consistency, but it becomes a limitation to some chapters. For example, Javier Pérez Mendieta’s chapter on Bolivia covers only the years following municipal decentralization (1995–2010). Although it provides a thorough description of Bolivia’s postdecentralization institutional framework, there is no analysis of the predecentralization period (1982–95). Even strictly applying the volume’s key indicators only to subnational elections (rather than to subnational territorial units, an option not pursued in the volume), Bolivia has had municipal elections in major cities (department capitals plus El Alto) since 1985. Because the last two decades saw dramatic changes to Bolivia’s party system, it would be interesting to examine what factor municipal decentralization played in reshaping party system dynamics. This could be done using the 1994 decentralization reforms as a “natural experiment.” The strongest chapters are those with longer historical trajectories, which both provide more observations and allow for discussion of changes to the broader political context. For example, the chapter on Argentina by Suárez-Cao and Mora Pegoraro covers the entire current democratic period (1983–2011). Because they cover nearly three decades, Suárez-Cao and Pegoraro trace dynamic changes in Argentina’s party system, which, despite an explosion in the number of parties between 1999 and 2007, remained dominated by traditional parties (Peronists and UCR). Freidenberg’s chapter on Ecuador meticulously traces the changes in electoral rules and institutional frameworks across nearly four decades (1978–2014). Her chapter also employs an “index for territorial coverage” (204) developed by Daniele Carmani (2004) to measure the share of subnational units in which parties nominate candidates. Furthermore, Freidenberg develops an “index of electoral success” (206) that calculates the share of party candidates who win election. This gives added nuance to the discussion of Ecuador’s party system that is absent in other chapters that do not

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apply these additional measures (with the exception of Tomáš Došek’s chapter on Chile). Similarly strong is the chapter on Peru, by Margarita C. Batlle and Jennifer Cyr, which also traces that country across its entire contemporary democratic period. Other country chapters add different dimensions to their analysis. Došek’s chapter on Uruguay applies Daniel Boschler’s standardized party nationalization score (318). Batlle’s chapter on Colombia includes a discussion of the relationship between party system congruence and changes in fiscal decentralization over time (117–19), as well as introducing her own qualitative measure of territorial coverage (113–14). Because their chapter on Peru covers three decades (1980–2011), Batlle and Cyr tease out changes to the national-subnational party system across three time periods (or “moments”): an early period of high congruence and traditional party dominance (1980–90), a period of low congruence and weak traditional parties (1990–2001), and a period of high congruence with weak traditional parties (2001– present). It is probably no coincidence that the periods correspond to the rise and fall of Fujimori. A more explicit effort at causal analysis would have strengthened the volume. At first glance, it looks as if incongruence and the decline of traditional parties seem to be increasing across the cases under study over time. Is this a regional pattern? If so, is this a product of a trend toward greater decentralization across the region? or some exogenous factors (such as the end of neoliberal hegemony)? The crossnational analysis presented in the introduction—particularly the scatterplots on pages 25 and 26—suggests that the measures for national-subnational congruence and predominance of traditional parties are positively correlated. The volume’s contributors have collectively produced a rich dataset that could, as an extension of the project, explore causal relationships between their two dimensions—or whether other independent factors affect the level of congruence or predominance of traditional parties. Nevertheless, this volume is a valuable addition to the literature on subnational politics in Latin America. Most important is that it demonstrates how fertile this area of research remains. The measures presented in the volume are a good anchoring point for empirically driven analysis of the relationship between subnational and national electoral levels and the factors that shape those dynamics. Moreover, the measures are more flexible than the authors acknowledge. For example, the measure of predominance of traditional parties specifically gauges the degree to which “traditional” parties dominate party systems. But it could easily be used to measure the strength of other types of parties (such as by ideological orientation or “parties more than X years old”). The volume’s greatest strength is the rich description of ten cases, organized around a consistent empirical framework. The book will also probably spark additional questions and new research agendas—which is consistent with the call for a “new research agenda” raised in Mercedes García Montero’s concluding chapter. Miguel Centellas University of Mississippi

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REFERENCE Carmani, Daniele. 2004. The Nationalization of Politics: The Formation of National Electorates in Western Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Richard Sandbrook, Reinventing the Left in the Global South: The Politics of the Possible. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Tables, figures, bibliography, index, 309 pp.; paperback $34.99. The recent experience of the Latin American left suggests why studies about “the left in the Global South,” such as Sandbrook’s, demand our attention. It was not for lack of good reasons that after the end of the Cold War the left in Latin America was “left for dead.” The brutality of military rule during the 1970s and 1980s destroyed or severely weakened most left-wing political parties and their allies in civil society, such as the trade unions. Arguably more damaging was Communism’s collapse after 1989, which dealt a double whammy to the Latin American left by undercutting the appeal of Marxism across the region while ending decades of Soviet support of revolutionary left-wing movements throughout Latin America. During the 1990s, the hegemonic rise of neoliberalism in the leading economies of Latin America appeared to have sealed the left’s fate in the region. Neoliberalism not only transformed the economy by shrinking the state’s economic footprint, it also muddled the political arena, especially when neoliberal policies like privatization were adopted by political parties with long populist traditions, such as the PRI in Mexico and the Peronists in Argentina. But in recent years, the Latin American left has staged a robust “resurgence.” At the present time, left-wing governments rule more than two-thirds of Latin Americans (maybe more, depending on how we label certain political regimes), and most of these governments have come to power only since the first decade of the 2000s. From its arguments to its selection of empirical evidence to its conclusions, this is an ambitious book, and in many respects an important contribution to the understanding of the current state of global politics. The author’s inspiration comes as much from the electoral successes of the left in the Global South as from the depressing state of left-wing politics in the Global North. Indeed, the book opens with a rather dispiriting overview of left-wing politics in Western Europe and the United States. The once promising Occupy movement is cited as a prime example: “Although the Occupy movement did raise awareness of inequality and its detrimental consequences, it produced no alternative program for realizing its egalitarian and democratic goals” (4). Of the liberal administration of Barack Obama, Sandbrook notes the failure to “rally support within Congress (or even his own party) for many of his modestly progressive policies” (4). In France and the United Kingdom, “the Right has emerged to express the anger and insecurities of electorates resulting from austerity and high unemployment” (4). The contrast with the vibrancy of the left in the Global South leads Sandbrook to observe that “it is mainly in the Global South,