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Existing literature has long argued that strong political parties are instrumental for a well-functioning democracy. Yet, in highly unequal societies, parties - particularly those that threaten to redistribute income or wealth - may also constitute democracy's most dangerous threat. Latin American elites have long 'locked in' institutions that curb the rise of redistributive threats, but when parties with strong ties to popular sectors overcome these barriers and threaten elites, or traditional parties are captured by redistributive-seeking politicians, democracy is unlikely to survive. To theory-build, I draw on time-series cross-sectional observational data, as well as survey experiments on samples of economic elites, to test the microfoundations of the theory.

Existing literature has long argued that strong political parties are instrumental for a well-functioning democracy. Yet, in highly unequal societies, parties - particularly those that threaten to redistribute income or wealth - may also constitute democracy's most dangerous threat. Latin American elites have long 'locked in' institutions that curb the rise of redistributive threats, but when parties with strong ties to popular sectors overcome these barriers and threaten elites, or traditional parties are captured by redistributive-seeking politicians, democracy is unlikely to survive. To theory-build, I draw on time-series cross-sectional observational data, as well as survey experiments on samples of economic elites and the general population, to test the microfoundations of the theory.