Review of the book: HUBER, Evelyne and STEPHENS, John D. Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality in Latin America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.The book focuses on the links and long-term effects between democracy, redistributive policies, poverty, and inequality in the region, with forces of the left acting as an intervening variable in this relation. Working with these principal variables, the authors develop an impressive work that is theoretically consistent, exhaustive in terms of data collected, and methodologically sophisticated, combining the solid use of statistical tools with a comparative historical analysis of selected cases. As far as I know, it is the most competent and complete work that manages to establish not only statistical but also causal links between the consolidation of democracy, redistributive policies (within the context of the construction of a welfare state), and the reduction in inequality and poverty in Latin America. It is an obligatory text for students of the region as well as for those who study these topics in different contexts — such as the extensive European literature about the construction (and reform) of welfare states. In addition, the book comments on the broader discussion about the potential of democracy in the 21st century and its impact on the everyday lives of people. The principal contribution of Huber and Stephens is, in my view, the proof they provide of the long-term connections between democracy and the reduction of poverty and inequality. With this, they confirm the findings of other authors who write about Latin America (SEGURA-UBIERGO, 2007) and about other regions (HAGGARD and KAUFMAN, 2008; McGUIRE, 2010). In the words of Hubert and Stephens (p.12), "Democracy does not guarantee uniform movement toward lower poverty and inequality, but it makes gradual movement in this direction possible". Whether due to permitting the ascension of parties concerned with social justice, or to the repeated functioning, during decades, of the Schumpeterian mechanisms of the electoral selection of elites minimally concerned with the well-being of the population, democracy makes a difference. For those who are dissatisfied with it (and they are not few), this is quite a discovery
