The triumph of politics : the return of the left in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador / George Philip and Francisco Panizza.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction - The triumph of politics -- Chapter 1 - The military and the rise of the Left -- Chapter 2 - The politics of mass protests -- Chapter 3 - Populism and the return of the political -- Chapter 4 - Personalism, plebiscites and institutions in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador -- Chapter 5 - The politics of oil and gas: twenty-first century socialism in practice -- Chapter 6 - The fault lines of Latin American integration

The Triumph of Politics offers a comparative and historical interpretation of Venezuela's Chavez, Bolivia's Morales and Ecuador's Correa - South America's most prominent {u2018}21st century socialists'. It argues that the claims of these 21st century socialists should be taken seriously even though not necessarily at face value. The authors show how the consensual market oriented policymaking that characterized almost all of South America in the 1990s has now given way to something quite different. Polarization and intense political conflict have returned to much of the region. Although the Left has not always been the beneficiary of this changed pattern, the {u2018}21st century' governments of Chavez, Morales and Correa have been agenda setters. The questions raised by their emergence, style of governance and policy orientations resonate across Latin America and beyond. It is likely that the kind of politics with which they have been associated will be influential in the region for quite some time to come.