This is an advanced-level political science textbook intended mainly for readers in their third or fourth year of university or masters-level graduate students with an interest in contemporary Latin American politics. Among the textbooks in Japanese, Sekai no naka no Latin America Seiji (Latin American Politics in the World, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Press, 2023), published in March 2023 and co-authored by Shuichiro Masukata and Takahiro Miyachi, sufficiently covers the basic concepts and historical background of Latin American politics. Therefore, this book aims to introduce a more specialized and advanced discussion in political science to better understand Latin American politics with a focus on a range of individual themes.

This book has three main distinguishing features. The first is that it deals with the main themes of 21st century Latin American politics, particularly in the 2010s onward. In the roughly 10 years starting in the mid-2000s, Latin America experienced economic growth as a result of the commodity boom, which is followed by growth tapering off in the post-commodity boom period around 2013 and contracting economies due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Meanwhile, despite these economic ups and downs, Latin American society has steadily progressed, leading to real change in people’s attitudes and behavior. This change has brought about new political phenomena and challenges in a variety of ways.

This book thus consists of chapters on the following eight themes in order to understand contemporary Latin American politics. Chapter 1 examines the concept of the state as a major prerequisite for discussing each country’s politics, then Chapter 2 discusses the military, which is once again increasing its influence despite a temporal withdrawal from politics with the “democratic wave” of the late 20th century. Chapter 3 argues the judiciary, which plays an important role in achieving a healthy democracy, while Chapter 4 considers presidential-legislative relations, which affect the quality and stability of a democracy. Chapter 5 discusses the messages of people’s voting behavior, based on the idea that the core of a representative democracy lies in a government reflecting the voice and interests of the people, and Chapter 6 examines how the people’s voice is expressed through electoral systems. Chapter 7 then looks at the options that political parties are offering to the people and how meaningful those options are, and Chapter 8 considers how protest movements can play a new role within existing representative democracy.

In addition, Columns (1)-(5) in Chapters 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8 provide the information on some important points related to the main themes that are not discussed in detail in the main text of the chapters.

The second distinguishing feature of this book is that chapters are organized by each of the specific themes mentioned above and that in each chapter emphasis is placed on state of the art of the literature. Subsequently, chapters begin with some political events related to each theme, while touching on the background behind them and providing clues to better understand these events from a perspective of political science.

There are two provisos in this respect. The first is that we do not have a chapter of political systems, which tend to be an essential topic in textbooks. The second is that we have little emphasis on left/right leaning, which is frequently referred to as a characteristic of Latin American politics in the 2000s and 2010s.

As for political systems, issues in recent years such as democratic backsliding and authoritarianization attract particular attention in the field of comparative politics. However, as discussed in Chapter 2, Latin America does not face military coups d’état as in the past, so there is not necessarily a clear break in society, the economy, or even politics before and after democratic backsliding or authoritarianization. Therefore, considering Latin American politics from only the perspective of political systems risks overlooking some critical points. This book focuses on processes before and after elections, which is an important indicator of a democracy. More specifically, it pays special attention to the actual state of representativeness contested in an election, a power struggle between actors whose legitimacy is endorsed by an election, and the extent to which the official rules enacted after an election have been significantly enforced with respect to the people and society overall.

With regard to left/right leaning, it is true that left-leaning (pink tide) in the 2000s promoted the inclusion of people in political, economic and social dimensions to some extent. But it has been increasingly argued that its influence has not been as great as initially anticipated. Considering ideological shifts from the standpoint of civil society, not just from the standpoint of political elites such as the president and his/her parties, there have not been any major swings to the left or right in the past 20 years in Latin America. While there is a certain ideological distance between the left and right in many countries, on the whole, most of the people are located near the center. Even ideological swings of the president’s party towards the left or right have come to be seen just as a reaction to the inability of the previous administration in each country that could not handle the issues of the time.

The third distinguishing feature of this book is that it leverages the benefits of online publication. As an open access e-book, it can be viewed and downloaded by anyone for free from the Institute of Developing Economies’ (IDE) website. Sources and further reading for each chapter are hyperlinked (the underlined words), enabling easy access to the original information and literature (however, in the EPUB version, the links within the tables and figures are not available for navigation). Those using the print-on-demand version are encouraged to obtain the PDF or EPUB version from the IDE's website and use them together. I hope that you deepen your understanding of Latin American politics and your interest in the topic utilizing these links and exploring further information and literature.

As this is an advanced textbook, we do not expect students to read this book chapter by chapter along with corresponding lectures. Rather, we expect readers to take advantage of this book as a supplementary reading of specific political themes or a further reading. We hope that many readers deepen their understanding of and interest in contemporary Latin American politics with this book.

Naokatsu Uetani, Hirokazu Kikuchi, and Kota Miura (Editors), March 2025