The Third Wave of Democratization in Latin America: Advances and Setbacks. Edited by Frances Hagopian and Scott Mainwaring. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. 432p. $28.99.

Representative democracies refuse to collapse in Latin America. They endure even in the face of challenges that, in the region's past, have spelled democratic ruin. These include financial and economic crises, coup attempts, and persistent political and/or criminal violence. But if democracies stand, presidents fail with noticeable frequency. In the last 18 years, chief executives have resigned or been removed from office—without suspension of democratic rule—in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela. Interrupted presidencies, to borrow Arturo Valenzuela's apposite description, may well become one of three interlinked regional democratic markers. The second potential marker is the ascendance of political outsiders and the return of outcasts: Obscure, improbable, and discredited candidates (re)emerge as viable, even formidable, electoral contenders. The third, though seemingly at odds with the other two, is in fact closely related: citizenries that waver between disenchantment and bitterness, apathy and mobilization.