This book develops a new framework for explaining how political parties survive severe crises in Latin America. Challenging accounts that equate survival with electoral recovery, it argues that endurance emerges from elite incentives shaped by territorial depth, organizational routines, and shifting strategic opportunities. The analysis centers on Argentina's Radical Civic Union, showing how subnational structures and legislative footholds anchored elites after national collapse and enabled a gradual adaptation toward coalition-based relevance, culminating in the successful Cambiemos alliance in 2015. Comparative cases from Venezuela, Peru, and Costa Rica reveal why parties with similar histories failed to adapt. The concluding chapter applies the framework to Argentina's contemporary realignment under Javier Milei, demonstrating how outsider disruption once again pushes the UCR toward strategies rooted in its organizational inheritance. Across these chapters, the book offers a theory of party survival that explains not only why some parties endure without national recovery, but also how they reinvent their political purpose in fragmented political systems.

Introduces new approach to party adaptation explaining why some traditional parties survive crisis while others collapse Engages debates on the post-crisis fates of Latin America's traditional political parties Explains party survival by tracing when organizational routines remain usable to elites after electoral defeat

Autorentext

Sam Maynard teaches on the history faculty at The Pingry School in New Jersey. Previously, he has held academic posts at the Oxford Internet Institute and Monmouth University. He holds a D.Phil. in Politics from the University of Oxford, where his research examined political party survival, elite behavior, and democratic institutions in Latin America. His work includes publications on party organization, democratic performance, computational propaganda, and Latin American political development.

Inhalt

Chapter 1: Introduction: Reconceptualizing Party Survival in Latin America.- Chapter 2: Building a Framework for Party Survival: An Elite-Based Approach.- Chapter 3: The Origins, Structure, and Persistence of an Elite-Based Party.- Chapter 4: The First Crisis of Radicalism: Voter Rejection, Crisis, and the Rise of La Alianza.- Chapter 5: The Second Crisis of Radicalism: From Irrelevant Party to Strategic Coalition Partner.- Chapter 6: Party Survival in Comparative Perspective: Evidence from Venezuela, Peru, and Costa Rica .- Chapter 7: Conclusion: Party Politics and Party Survival in Milei's Argentina.