Drawing on an ongoing conflict over hydrocarbon development in a protected area in Southern Bolivia, this chapter explores resource frontiers as key sites of juristocratic reckoning, where international and national discourses of rights are simultaneously invoked and undermined by violent processes of accumulation by dispossession. A leading example of transformative constitutionalism, Bolivia’s 2009 Constitution defined the country as a “Plurinational State” and recognized an array of new rights for Indigenous, originary, and peasant peoples, including in relation to territory and the environment. Yet state dependence on natural gas extraction has produced a widening gap between legal discourse and practice. This chapter asks: What new forms of politics emerge as communities at extractive frontiers reckon with the possibilities and limits of law and rights to confront ongoing processes of environmental dispossession? The arrival of oil companies in the Tariquía Reserve catalyzed a wave of human rights education in remote rural communities, yet a series of failed constitutional challenges have exposed the limits of law and rights as instruments to counter state-led extraction. Rather than turning away from rights, the chapter argues that community activists in Tariquía see themselves as custodians of the 2009 Constitution against the state. Their embodied praxis of territorial defense points to a form of juristocratic politics from below, in which the state’s monopoly on political and legal authority is called into question.

This chapter begins by acknowledging punitive damages’ status as the paradigmatic proof of punishment’s place in the law of torts. A brief overview of current punitive damages practices around the world first shows that the place of punishment in tort law is no longer debated only by common law scholars. Then a detailed description of the understanding, scholarly treatment, and judicial availability of punitive damages focuses on two major common law jurisdictions (England and the United States) and various civil law legal traditions (mainly Latin America and Continental Europe). This map of the unique contours and idiosyncratic features of the scholarly debates and judicial availability of punitive damages of those jurisdictions reveals a common pattern that begs further inquiry: in most jurisdictions, the tendency is to frame the debate around the place of punishment in tort law such that the root problem becomes finding a way to circumvent the fundamental punitive quest instead of addressing it head-on.

The Introduction introduces the central research questions of the study and summarizes the main arguments. It also lays out the research design and discusses the key concepts and how it measures them. Finally, it provides summaries of all of the chapters in the book.

Chapter 2 uses an original database on historical elections in South America to explore when and where democracy first emerged in the region. Scholars traditionally portrayed nineteenth-century elections in Latin America as farces, but in recent years historians have challenged this view. This chapter shows that many South American elections in the nineteenth century involved significant participation and competition, and a few were even free and fair. Nevertheless, authoritarian rule predominated. Most elections were non-competitive, numerous restrictions on the franchise existed, and voter turnout tended to be low in comparison to Europe and the United States. Moreover, the few democratic episodes in the nineteenth century proved to be quite brief, as the freely elected presidents were either overthrown or subverted democracy to perpetuate themselves or their allies in power. However, in the first three decades of the twentieth century, a great divide occurred. A few South American countries, namely Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay, established democratic regimes that lasted a dozen years or more. By contrast, authoritarian rule deepened in the other six countries of the region

Chapter 4 examines what led to the emergence of the strong parties that helped bring about democracy in some South American countries. It shows that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, relatively strong national parties arose in Chile, Colombia, and Uruguay, and, to a lesser extent, in Argentina and Paraguay, but not in the other countries of the region. Two main factors shaped party development during this period. First, strong parties emerged in countries that had intense but relatively balanced religious or territorial cleavages, where neither side of a cleavage clearly dominated the other. Religious issues, in particular, generated passions that politicians could exploit to build parties. Second, strong parties tended to emerge in countries that had populations concentrated in relatively small areas without major geographic barriers. In these countries, it was easier for politicians to mount national campaigns and for party leaders to develop organizations that penetrated the entire country. These arguments are explored through comparative statistics and brief case studies of party development in all ten South American countries.

Chapter 1 lays out the central theoretical arguments of the book. It argues that three factors played a key role in the emergence of democracy in region: the professionalization of the military, the rise of strong opposition parties, and splits within the ruling party. It analyzes what led to the professionalization of the military and the rise of strong opposition parties and it shows how they led to varying regime outcomes in different South American countries. This chapter also discusses why existing theories of democratization cannot fully explain the emergence of democracy in the region

The introduction provides an overview of the volume’s key theoretical concepts and empirical cases. It emphasizes that there have been a variety of antifascisms in Latin America and the Caribbean that were not merely derivative of European antifascism or the product of European exiles. Rather, there were homegrown Latin American and Caribbean antifascist movements forged in the interplay between local, regional, and transnational processes. By placing Latin American and Caribbean antifascists in relation to the broader historiography on antifascism, the introduction illuminates their specific heterogeneous agendas, strategies, and styles as well as their class, racial, ethnic, and gendered dimensions. Latin American and Caribbean antifascists participated in exchanges from the Global South to the Global North and within the Global South. They resembled and yet differed from other Global South antifascisms regarding race and imperialism. The introduction ends by providing an overview of the chapters by placing them within the book’s theoretical framework.

Chapter 3 argues that the professionalization of the armed forces played a key role in the emergence of democracy in the region by bringing an end to the opposition revolts that had plagued the region in the nineteenth century. It employs an original database on historical revolts in South America to analyze the evolution of political violence in the region. It shows that revolts were frequent in the nineteenth century and undermined the prospects for democracy by overthrowing elected governments and provoking state repression. Most of these revolts came from opposition groups and other forces outside the state apparatus. At the turn of the century, however, most South American countries professionalized their armed forces with the assistance of foreign missions, which led to a dramatic decline in revolts in the region and helped pave the way for democracy. Nevertheless, a few South American countries failed to take sufficient steps to modernize their militaries and, as a result, they remained highly unstable. A series of regression analyses show that increases in military strength and professionalization are correlated with a decline in outsider revolts, but not insider revolts, during this period.

The Conclusion summarizes the main arguments in the book and discusses to what extent the factors that shaped regime outcomes in the early twentieth century mattered post-1929. It also examines the broader theoretical implications of the book, analyzes the extent to which the arguments work in Mexico and Central America, and lays out an agenda for future research on historical democratization.

This chapter is a short intellectual biography focusing on my interest and engagement in questions of political legitimacy over the years. The chapter is organized into three parts. I begin by discussing how the issue of legitimacy has been one of my key intellectual concerns ever since I started to do research on politics, initially in the context of the study of political and legal regimes in Latin America (Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay). Next, I highlight my understanding of political legitimacy as a responsibility and what this means for the evaluation and judgment of politics. This understanding builds on one of my previous books, Legitimacy and Politics: A Contribution to the Study of Political Right and Political Responsibility. Finally, I focus on how, gradually, in particular in connection with my work with the United Nations (UN), I became interested in the question of political legitimacy at the international level.

Whether consumer law should address inequality has been approached from different perspectives in Latin America and Europe. EU consumer law has primarily relied on the interpretive benchmark of the average consumer, leading to a model of “empowerment through information” in service of maximum harmonization and economic integration. In Latin America, by contrast, statutes emphasize consumer protection based on the paradigm of the vulnerable consumer, leading to more robust substantive protection in addition to classic disclosure rules. This chapter compares the EU regime to the heterodox approach of Argentina, where courts have embraced the task of using consumer protection law to reduce inequality. Moreover, a recent Argentinean reform introduced the category of the hyper-vulnerable consumer to provide enhanced protection to consumers in a situation of aggravated vulnerability due to age, gender, physical or mental state, or social, economic, ethnic, and/or cultural circumstances. The chapter also discusses the prospect of reverse convergence (i.e., EU law converging to the Latin American mode) in view of European scholars’ growing call for the recognition of “structural vulnerabilities” in the context of the digital economy, which happens to be dominated by US companies.