The Paradox of Adversity: The Contrasting Fates of Latin America's New Left Parties

Strong parties are critical for democracy, but under what conditions do strong parties emerge? Paradoxically, adverse conditions may facilitate successful party-building. Office-seekers with low access to state resources and mass media must undertake the difficult work of organization-building to contend for power. Because organizationbuilding is slow, laborious, sometimes risky, and usually non-remunerative, the process selects for ideologically committed activists. Low state and media access thus facilitates the construction of durable parties—and is empirically associated with opposition to authoritarian rule. The article illustrates this argument through a comparison of three recently emerged left-wing parties in Latin America: two that survived early electoral crises, Brazil’s Workers’ Party and Mexico’s Party of the Democratic Revolution, and one that did not, Argentina’s Front for a Country in Solidarity.