This chapter looks at the right-wing landscape in Chile, in particular the four parties present in it. To better understand the similarities and differences between these four parties, this chapter analyzes novel survey data that allows for a detailed description of those who identify with the right in contemporary Chile. By mapping out the right-wing electorate, the authors show that the formation of a stable electoral coalition between these four right-wing parties is anything but simple because of the important ideological differences between their voters.

This chapter uses data from the Dataset of Parties, Elections, and Ideology in Latin America (DPEILA) to understand the recent rightward move being seen in many party systems within the region, as well as the subsequent process of party-system polarization. The authors argue that major economic downturns favor radical, antisystem alternatives, thereby creating an opportunity for newly created parties to campaign on extreme policy platforms. They also demonstrate that polarization increases when leftist incumbents are associated with progressive policy change, as right-wing parties have become more ideologically extreme. This indicates that the left turn of the 2000s has at times favored the radicalization of important sectors of the right.

This chapter develops two main arguments to account for the surprising longevity of Fujimorismo in Peru. First, although Alberto Fujimori did not invest resources in party-building during his authoritarian government (1990–2000), he developed populist appeals that contributed to the formation of a political identification with Fujimorismo. Second, the second-generation leader of Fujimorismo, Alberto’s daughter Keiko, has been trying to convert this nascent partisanship into a resource for party institutionalization ever since her first presidential campaign in 2011.

In the conclusion, we review the book’s chapters and argue that Latin America has experienced a resurgence of conservative forces in recent years. We analyze the supply and demand of a broad set of conservative alternatives, paying special attention to the processes of party-building, adaptation, and rebranding. We find that new right-wing forces often have weak organizations, but have been able to mobilize voters along noneconomic cleavages, including security, gender politics, and reproductive rights. The adoption of a highly conservative profile has allowed parties to access lower-class constituencies and mobilize mass support among them. The politicization of cultural issues, such as LGBT rights and religious identities, has contributed to polarization and the rise of populist radical right parties. These parties have flourished within the context of political and economic shocks and benefited from cultural backlashes and the crises of traditional right-wing parties. In these situations, politics becomes a zero-sum game and the stakes get higher. Democratic stability in the region is arguably at its most tenuous state since the age of military dictatorships. Interrupted presidencies have become realities in many countries over the past fifteen years, raising concerns about democratic stability and potential threats to democratic institutions.

This chapter explains how the Chilean right has been reconfigured due to the multidimensional crisis that has shaken Chile since the end of 2019. The authors analyze how tensions regarding competition and identity have affected relevant actors and structured their perceptions, calculations, and behaviors. They examine the ideational changes and continuities of the Chilean right’s road to moderation. They argue that the joint processes of liberalization and democratization gave rise to a gattopardista strategy of “changing so that things may remain the same.” This was characterized by the programmatic moderation of coalition candidates until the 2017 campaign, with traditional right-wing parties moving to the center to the extent that they did not threaten the pillars of the neoliberal model. However, when centrist and left-wing parties aimed to significantly reform the institutional core, the traditional right did react, and moved further to the right on the ideological continuum.

In recent decades, Latin America has experienced a resurgence of the political right after the “left turn” of the 2000s. The introduction argues that right-wing parties have adapted to social and political changes by emphasizing cultural issues, mobilizing voters along salient political cleavages, and crafting distinctive party platforms and political identities. It also introduces a typology of right-wing parties and movements that captures the diversity of the post-2000 Latin American right in both ideological and organizational terms. Looking at the demand side, the introduction sets the stage for our analysis of the changes and continuities in the attitudes of Latin American electorates. On the supply side, the introduction sets the groundwork for mapping the programmatic features that distinguish the post-2000 political right from right-wing parties created in previous eras. Finally, the introduction presents an outline of the book and summarizes its main findings.

This chapter explains why right-wing strategies of adaptation and survival had varying degrees of success during and after the left turn. It argues that right-wing parties were most likely to survive and remain competitive in national elections when they relied on strong party brands and organizations. These strong party brands and organizations depended, in turn, on when the parties were founded and whether they had roots in an authoritarian regime.

Having taken the reader through the rapidly evolving political and religious landscape of three major Western democracies, in its two concluding chapters this book returns to the key questions raised in the Introduction. Thus, Chapter 16 moves from the specifics to the general and seeks to assess the insights from each case study from a comparative perspective, discussing common and distinct patterns. As it goes through each of the research questions it distils four conclusions that can serve as cornerstones for a more general theory of the dynamics between religion, populism and right-wing identity politics. The first is that right-wing populists’ success has often been a response to a democratic lack of representation of the new identity cleavage in the cases studied. The second is that right-wing populists’ references to Christianity is part of a new white identity politics, in which Christianity serves as a civilisational marker of belonging, rather than a source of religious believing. The third is that there is often a potential for religious immunity against right-wing populist appeals. The fourth is that the existence or strength of this immunity is shaped by the behaviour of mainstream parties and faith leaders who can play an immense role in shaping national populists’ ability to redefine and re-politicise religion in German, French and US politics.