This paper examines the uneven processes of far-right normalization across
Andean countries, understood as the increasing ability of far-right actors to influence
political discourse and to form part of governing coalitions. While Peru shows the most
advanced case of normalization, Chile and Colombia present partial trajectories, and in
Bolivia and Ecuador far-right platforms remain comparatively marginal. I argue that the
variation is explained by the presence—or absence—of authoritarian legacies emerging
from the interaction between political violence and restorative authoritarian regimes.
Where intense episodes of political violence were followed by strong authoritarian
governments able to legitimize themselves through restorative discourses, conditions
were created for far-right actors to later gain discursive and coalition influence.
Conversely, where only one of these elements was present, or both were weak, far-right
normalization has been limited. Using a multi-method approach, I leverage the variation
present in Andean democracies to analyze this relationship. Peru combines both
conditions—intense political violence and a strong restorative authoritarian regime—
making it the clearest case of far-right normalization. In Chile, a strong authoritarian
regime but limited prior violence produced partial normalization, while in Colombia the
sequence was reversed, with intense violence but failed authoritarian restoration. In
Bolivia and Ecuador, the absence of both elements has constrained far-right actors to
remain peripheral. By linking authoritarian legacies to contemporary political
competition dynamics, the paper contributes to broader debates on authoritarian nostalgia,
explaining how historical experiences shape the success and normalization of far-right
forces in Latin America.
Paolo Sosa-Villagarcia is a postdoctoral researcher with the Center for Inter-American Policy and Research (CIPR) at Tulane University and a senior researcher at the Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (IEP). He holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of British Columbia (UBC). He has been a Fox International Fellow (2019-20) at Yale University, a Public Scholars Initiative Fellow at UBC (2020), the Human-Centric Cyber-Security Fellow with the Electoral Integrity Project (2024), and the country coordinator for Peru at the Varieties of Democracy Project V-Dem (2014-2021).
