The Rise of the New Far Right in Latin America: Crisis of Globalization, Authoritarian Path Dependence and Civilian-Military Relations

Abstract

The study of right-wing movements and, in particular, the new far right has aroused interest in different fields of social science. Debates among historians have focused on the question of to what extent this is a new phenomenon and how it relates to previous experiences around the world. For their part, studies made from the standpoint of political science, sociology, anthropology and international relations have tried to understand the similarities between these new far right movements all while analysing the specific characteristics of each case. This chapter engages those questions and offers an account of the new far right from the Global South, with a particular focus on Latin America. For O’Donnell, the Latin American authoritarian regimes of the 1960s and 1970s originated upon the intersection between politics and economics, characterizing these experiences of military government as bureaucratic-authoritarian states which were a particular historical manifestation of the capitalist state.