Since 1999, left governments have taken power in ten Latin American countries: Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay, and El Salvador. By 2009, they governed more than two-thirds of the continent’s inhabitants, a state of affairs never before witnessed in the continent’s history (Levitsky and Roberts 2011a: 2). This ‘left turn’ (Castañeda 2006) has ...