Political representation as problem and solution

FERRERO JUAN PABLO; ANA NATALUCCI

Bath

Congreso; Conference 2022; 2022

Society of Latin American Studies Latin America and University of Bath

The objective of this article is twofold: 1) to discuss the concept of post-neoliberal political representation and 2) to develop a middle-range conceptual model to understand transition in political representation in Latin America in the 21 Century. This article argues that contemporary developments in Latin American politics mark the emergence of a new type of political post-neoliberal representation. The nature of political representation is important because it lays the basis for the legitimacy of political regimes and this, in turn, tends to widen the quality of representative democracy. To be sure, we propose to understand post-neoliberal political representation as the consolidation of at least two electorally competitive socio-political poles with institutional-identity ascendancy, after having gone through a period of crisis. Furthermore, we argue that the polities that transition to this new type of political representation achieve political stability often despite having gone through a serious economic crisis. On the contrary, the polities that have not transitioned to this type of regime can experience political instability without economic crisis. We test this argument comparing the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile.