Why has Latin America turned left?

In the past five years, Latin American governments that came to power in the 1990s and favored privatization, deregulation, and the opening of their borders to foreign trade and investment have been swept aside and replaced by presidents who lean to the left.

In Brazil, the Workers' Party candidate, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, was elected to the presidency in 2002. The following year, Argentina elected a left-leaning Peronist, Nestor Kirchner; earlier this year in Uruguay, Taber, Vazquez's election ended 150 years of electoral dominance by the country's two established political parties. Venezuela retained Hugo Chavez and his "Bolivarian revolution" in a national referendum in August 2004. Bolivia has yet to elect a leftist president but is likely to do so. That country's "Movement toward Socialism" has forced President Carlos Mesa to resign and has signaled that potential successors will be met with similar resistance. Mexico also appears poised to follow in the footsteps of its southern neighbors; the leading contender in the 2006 presidential elections is Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the populist mayor of Mexico City.

What accounts for this sea of change in Latin American politics? Have Latin American voters undergone a profound ideological transformation in half a decade? Or do other factors explain the defeat of politicians who espoused free markets by those whose rhetoric echoes a more populist past?

Latin America's anemic economic performance explains the leftward shift in its politics. With the exceptions of Chile and Costa Rica, the economies of Latin America have limped along for the past two decades. In the 1980s, Latin America's economies ...