In this paper Ernesto Aranibar, coordinator of the joint International IDEA and the Netherlands Institute for Multiparty Democracy (NIMD) programme in Ecuador, demonstrates that in Latin America traditional heterogeneity within countries has been followed by staggering growth of economic differences between countries. This process ran parallel to the third democratic wave through which an almost universal homogeneity in procedural democratic political systems in Latin American countries was reached. Notwithstanding the democratic reforms, the shortfalls in governance delivery with the backdrop of massive poverty and very high inequality and violence has contributed to the creation in Latin American countries of a new within-countries political heterogeneity in which pre-modern, modern and sophisticated political realities come face to face with political systems in which political parties, showing high polarization, volatility and weak institutionalization, are severely criticized by public opinion. The paper suggests new possibilities for political parties faced with this situation including a political countercyclical focus that implies a new role, tools and challenges for them.

Ernesto Aranibar is currently Coordinator of Agora Democrática, the joint International IDEA-NIMD programme in Ecuador. He is a Bolivian economist with studies in Santiago, Chile and Louvain, Belgium. He has been Ambassador, Permanent Representative of Bolivia to the United Nations in New York, Minister of Planning and Coordination and Minister of Finance for the constitutional government of Bolivia.