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A review essay on books by: (1)Mercedes Botto (Ed.), Research and International Trade Policy Negotiations: Knowledge and Power in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2010); (2)Mark S. Manger (Ed.), Investing in Protection: The Politics of Preferential Trade Agreements Between North and South (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); (3)Diego Sanchez-Ancochea and Kenneth C. Shadlen (Eds.), The Political Economy of Hemispheric Integration: Responding to Globalization in the Americas (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); and (4)Mireya Solis, Barbara Stallings, and Saori N. Katada (Eds.), Competitive Regionalism: FTA Diffusion in the Pacific Rim (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).

Through the application of an analytical model categorized as 'missionary,' this article examines the cultural and political-religious frames that sustain the leadership of Hugo Chavez. It demonstrates that missionary politics is a forceful presence in today's Venezuela, and should be understood as a form of political religion characterized by a dynamic relationship between a charismatic leader and a moral community that is invested with a mission of salvation against conspiratorial enemies. The leader's verbal and nonverbal discourses play an essential role in the development of such a missionary mode of politics, which seeks to provide the alienated mass of underprivileged citizens with an identity and a sense of active participation in national affairs. This study argues that purely utilitarian and materialistic explanations of Chavez's leadership fail to capture these soteriological dynamics in his movement. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractIn recent years, important indigenous parties have emerged for the first time in Latin American history. Although some analysts view this development with trepidation, this essay argues that the indigenous parties in Latin America are unlikely to exacerbate ethnic conflict or create the kinds of problems that have been associated with some ethnic parties in other regions. To the contrary, the emergence of major indigenous parties in Latin America may actually help deepen democracy in the region. These parties will certainly improve the representativeness of the party system in the countries where they arise. They should also increase political participation and reduce party system fragmentation and electoral volatility in indigenous areas. They may even increase the acceptance of democracy and reduce political violence in countries with large indigenous populations.

ABSTRACTMounting evidence suggests that Latin American democracies are characterized by politics and societies becoming more divisive, confrontational, and polarized. This process, which we define here as the "new polarization" in Latin America, seems to weaken the ability of democratic institutions to manage and resolve social and political conflicts. Although recent scholarship suggests that polarization is integral to contemporary patterns of democratic "backsliding" seen in much of the world, this new polarization in the region has not yet received systematic scholarly attention. Aiming to address this gap in the literature, the different contributions in this special issue revise the conceptualization, measurement, and theory of a multidimensional phenomenon such as polarization, including both its ideological and affective dimensions, as well as perspectives at the elite and mass levels of analysis. Findings shed light on the phenomenon of polarization as both a dependent and an independent variable, contributing to comparative literature on polarization and its relationship to democratic governance.