Why is Bukele-style punitivism gaining traction in Latin America’s least likely democracies? This talk examines Chile and Uruguay, two countries long treated as regional exceptions because of their stable party systems, stronger states, and comparatively low levels of violence. Both now face a post-pandemic transformation of organized crime, but they processed the shock differently: Chile’s decomposed party system turned insecurity into punitive competition, while Uruguay’s more legitimate parties initially channeled it through deliberation and cross-partisan coordination. Yet both cases are converging toward the same demand for authoritarian shortcuts. I argue that this convergence reflects state erosion from below: the declining centrality of the state and formal economy in organizing citizens’ life chances, reinforced by party-society detachment, expanding informal and illegal markets, and the time compression of democratic governance. Bukelismo is less a leader-driven export than the political name for a structural demand democracies increasingly struggle to contain, manage, and fulfill.

Juan Pablo Luna is the Inaugural Diamond Brown Chair in Democratic Studies at McGill. While mainly focused on comparative Latin American politics, his research analyzes how socio-structural conditions such as social inequality and state capacity shape democratic institutions and development trajectories. In recent years, he has researched how organized crime dynamics is contributing to reshape politics, states, and markets in Latin America.