ABSTRACT
Starting in 1998, a number of presidential elections in Latin America gave rise to left and center-left governments. This was a striking occurrence for several reasons: throughout the region’s history, revolutionary governments had mostly come to power through armed struggle; and this wave of electoral victories by progressive political figures came after at least a decade during which the right had claimed an “end of ideology”. There have been quite substantial differences in the nature of the distinct “Pink Tide” governments. Neoliberal policies spread throughout Latin America in the wake of the debt crises of the 1980s through condition-tied loans from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The social backlash to these policies and the unresponsiveness and repression of mobilization by the governments implementing them undercut the legitimacy of the major political actors and parties of the time, leading to the introduction of new political actors who sparked the rise of the Pink Tide.
