Hispanic American Historical Review

Book Reviews / National Period 183

engaging, accessible prose and clear lessons on Latin American nationalism make it
appealing for scholars, students, and the general public.

alex galarza, Michigan State University

doi 10.1215/00182168-3727767

Party-System Collapse: The Roots ofCrisis in Peru and Venezuela. By jason seawright.
Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012. Figures. Tables. Notes. Bibliography.
Index. xi, 293 pp. Cloth, $60.00.

It is always difficult to tackle issues of contemporary politics in Latin America, where

information is scarce and the situation is fluid. This book is a valiant attempt to
understand why voters abandoned their support for traditional political parties in Peru
and Venezuela and decided instead to back nontraditional political organizations.
The author was prompted to investigate this phenomenon because he felt that political
science had failed in its analysis of traditional political party collapse in the region. As
a result, he spends some time arguing convincingly that economic collapse does not
necessarily equate, as some have argued, to a change in the traditional party system.
Consequently, the author feels that poor representation of the electorate is the key to
understanding the dynamics of traditional party collapse. Central to his thesis is the role
played by corruption, which together with poor ideological representation is the main
reason for the demise of the traditional political parties in the countries under his
microscope. The problem is that the author’s theory does not appear to have any pre-
dictive value because he is explaining what happened electorally in these countries during
a given period. It should be noted that although the book’s main focus is on the two
countries mentioned in its title, Dr. Jason Seawright examines in some depth the electoral
experience of Argentina.
In order to construct his model, the author used a number of electoral data and
opinion polls, such as RedPol, Apoyo, the Political Database of the Americas, and the
World Values Survey. This means that on many occasions there is no comparable data for
the two countries that the author is investigating. The data is more complete for
Venezuela than Peru, so that in the latter case he is forced to use proxies in order to make a
valid comparison. This has its own heuristic problems, as one is never quite sure whether
the proxies can be truly used to represent what the author is trying to prove. It should be
noted that there is no discussion of abstention levels or spoiled ballot papers, which are
very useful for gauging voter apathy with the political system in toto or as a protest vote
against the incumbent party.
A minor irritant is that the title of the book is misleading, as the author is researching
the collapse of traditional parties rather than the democratic system as a whole. The
confusion is only resolved in chapter 2, when the author defines what he means by
“traditional party” (p. 33), “traditional party system” (p. 46), and “party-system collapse”
(p. 48). With a relatively restricted definition of a traditional party, the author examines
the electoral experience of Acción Democrática (AD) and Comité de Organización

Published by Duke University Press

 Hispanic American Historical Review

184 HAHR / February

Polı́tica Electoral Independiente (COPEI) in Venezuela and Alianza Popular Revolu-

cionaria Americana (APRA), Acción Popular, and Izquierda Unida in Peru. Although Dr.
Seawright has a solid knowledge of the politics of the region, it is strange that he does not
mention the two attempted coups in Venezuela in 1992 (the first one brought to national
prominence Major Hugo Chávez), which were the result of political frustration with
the traditional parties. Moreover, the impeachment of Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993
for corruption is only mentioned in passing on page 146. The situation at the time was
politically precarious, with the interim president, Dr. Ramón J. Velásquez, having as the
main goal of his tenure the preservation of the country’s democratic system by making
sure that elections took place at the end of 1993. The consequence of these events was
to weaken the electoral support for AD and by association the other traditional party,
allowing Rafael Caldera to win the 1993 presidential elections. Although the author
discusses Caldera’s 1993 victory at the head of Convergencia, which was not a political
party but an umbrella organization that grouped together a number of smaller political
groups, there is not sufficient explanation of the important events that took place prior to
the elections. It is extremely unlikely that Convergencia would have won the 1993
elections without Caldera, the founder of COPEI and a former president. The political
events of 1992–1993 strengthen the author’s central argument because they confirmed to
the electorate the generalized opinion that the leadership of the traditional parties
(referred to as cogollos) were more interested in enriching themselves than in the elec-
torate’s welfare.
The book is on the whole well written, and the author has a wide knowledge of the
continent’s political system. The observations made above should not detract people
from reading it, especially political scientists, who will find it thought-provoking. It is
probably of less interest to historians, as there is little discussion of the dynamics as well
as the main actors of the party political system in the countries studied.

brian mcbeth, St Antony’s College, University of Oxford

doi 10.1215/00182168-3727779

Power in Powerlessness: A Study of Pentecostal Life Worlds in Urban Chile. By martin

lindhardt. Religion in the Americas Series. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2012.
Tables. Notes. Bibliography. Index. vii, 270 pp. Cloth, $144.00.

In this empirically and theoretically rich book, Martin Lindhardt shows how the
everyday practices of Pentecostals help marginalized Chileans create new identities, gain
a sense of control over their lives, and develop new and meaningful interpretations of
their social reality.
Lindhardt’s subjects are direct descendants of the first Pentecostal church in Latin
America, the Methodist Pentecostal Church (MPC), founded in 1909. Lindhardt studied
the Evangelical Pentecostal Church (EPC), which emerged through a schism from the
MPC in 1934. Because the MPC’s founder left the church to help start the EPC, its
members claim to be the legitimate heirs of the continent’s first Pentecostal revival.

Published by Duke University Press