This introductory chapter presents the puzzle of the variation in agrarian elites’ capacity to organize electoral representation across Latin America after the third wave of democratization and discusses the consequences of this variation for redistributive politics. It summarizes the book’s central argument that agrarian elites’ strategies of political influence are explained by two factors: the perception of an existential threat and the level of intragroup fragmentation. Then, it discusses the relevance of that argument for the comparative politics literature, in particular regarding the relationship among economic elites’ representation, democratic consolidation, and redistribution. The chapter also offers background about a series of structural and political transformations that have changed agrarian elites’ sources of power in Latin America over the last six decades and describes my research methods, case selection strategy, and data sources.

This chapter analyses a case of party-building by agrarian elites in Chile. It presents evidence of Chilean landowners’ financial support of the political right, their identification with rightwing legislators, and the programmatic convergence between agrarian elites’ preferences and the policy positions of rightwing parties, Renovación Nacional (RN) in particular. The chapter argues that agrarian elites in Chile decided to invest in an electoral strategy of political influence at the time of the democratic transition because they feared a center-left government would endanger their property rights. It presents evidence of how this perceived threat was founded on landowners’ previous experience with democracy during the 1965–1973 period, when their farms were expropriated. The chapter also illustrates how low intragroup fragmentation facilitates party-building. Shared political and economic interests among the Chilean economic elite in general, and agrarian elites in particular, decreased the coordination costs associated with building a party to represent them. The chapter analyses the tax reform of 1990 and the Water Code reform of 2022 to show how the partisan strategy works.

This chapter explores how the book’s arguments travel beyond the analyzed cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, and discusses their broader implications for the field of comparative politics, in particular for the relationship among economic elites’ political representation, democracy, and inequality. It deals with questions such as: under what conditions will landowners respond to existential threats with electoral organization instead of by trying to destabilize democracy? When are candidate-centered strategies a viable substitute for party-building? Do the same factors that shape agrarian elites’ strategic choices explain how other interest groups organize to influence policymaking? First, the chapter tests the scope conditions of the argument by analyzing agrarian elites’ strategies of political influence in a country where democracy is less consolidated: Paraguay during the Lugo administration (2008–2012). Next, it looks at party-building by agrarian elites beyond South America, in a different historical context marked by civil war: post-1979 El Salvador. Finally, the chapter extends the argument beyond agrarian elites, focusing on nonpartisan electoral representation by other interest groups in two contemporary cases: for-profit universities in Peru and conservative religious groups in Colombia.