New Wine, Old Bottles: Latin America's Electoral Comebacks.

That leaders with strong democratic records and high exit approval ratings to leaders with weak democratic records and low exit approval ratings (and variations in between) are voted back into office alike poses a puzzle: Why do formers leaders make comebacks and why in the elections in which they do? This paper challenges hypotheses that attribute electoral comebacks to positive performance retrospective voting, to popular appeal or charisma, to the number of alternations of democratic transitions, or most recently, to a preference for familiarity during times of economic volatility and party fragmentation. Instead, this paper posits that it is the persistence of old political coalitions and institutions within the political system that secures comeback efforts. In doing so, it contends that a focus on transitions has overlooked and underestimated instances of continuity in political systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]