This chapter traces trajectories of counterrevolutions following six revolutions, which exhibit the full range of counterrevolutionary outcomes and offer useful comparisons to Egypt. First, it examines two revolutions that never experienced counterrevolutions: Tunisia’s and Libya’s 2011 revolutions. Both occurred in the same Arab Spring wave as Egypt’s revolution, but in Tunisia the new government faced a military whose interests were not deeply threatened by civilian rule and in Libya the coercive capacity of the former regime was largely destroyed in the brief civil war. Next, it examines two Latin American revolutions that demonstrate the two ways in which revolutionaries can maintain their capacity and defeat counterrevolutionary threats. Following Cuba’s 1959 revolution, Fidel Castro’s regime put down multiple counterrevolutions using its loyal revolutionary army. In Venezuela, following the 1958 democratic revolution, the government enjoyed none of these coercive resources, yet managed to thwart multiple counterrevolutionary coup attempts through a preservation of revolutionary unity and a return to mass mobilization. Finally, in two cases that are otherwise quite different to Egypt – Thailand’s 1973 democratic uprising and Hungary’s 1919 communist revolution – a very similar set of mechanisms undermined the capacity of the new governments and created opportunities for counterrevolutionaries to return to power.

As gold prices have soared, the Amazon and its inhabitants have had to bear the brunt of a rampant, environmentally destructive gold-mining rush. Small and medium-sized illegal, informal, and other irregular forms of so-called artisanal gold mining, as well as large-scale corporate gold mines, cause major and multifaceted socioenvironmental–health–human rights crises. The dynamics of the gold-mining boom are important to understand the key political economic sectors behind forest degradation and deforestation and to highlight how RDPEs work. The overall situation in the Amazon is presented, analyzing the causes of gold mining and the violence, especially in Peru, Brazil, and other key regions. The triple frontier between Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil is also analyzed as the irregular gold-mining RDPE is one of the most important drivers of deforestation. In this region, gold-mining operations are led by ex-guerilla groups in Venezuela, paramilitaries and other armed groups in Colombia, and, increasingly, by the First Capital Command and other drug factions from southeastern Brazil in Roraima’s Yanomami Indigenous lands.

Chapter 7 explores the reasons why Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela experienced relatively stable authoritarianism during the early twentieth century. All three countries professionalized their militaries during this period, which helped bring an end to the frequent revolts that had undermined their prospects for democracy in the nineteenth century. None of the three countries developed strong parties, however. The absence of strong parties impeded democratization in several ways. First, party weakness allowed presidents to concentrate authority and extend their hold on power in some cases. Second, and even more importantly, the weakness of opposition parties meant that the opposition had little chance of winning elections or enacting democratic reforms, particularly in the face of widespread government electoral manipulation. As a result, the opposition frequently abstained from elections, which only deepened authoritarian rule in these countries. In some instances, the opposition also encouraged the military to intervene to overthrow the president, which undermined otherwise mostly stable authoritarian regimes.

In 2012, at age 64, Anne desired to retire. She didn’t want to serve past her prime. If she retired, her lab space could go instead to a young investigator just starting a career. Anne was pleased with the search committee’s replacement – Merit Cudkowicz – a woman on Anne’s faculty who had established and directed their Program in Clinical Investigation. Her area of expertise was amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). She had also come down to Venezuela one year to work on the project. She went from ‘bench to bedside’ by assessing potential new therapies discovered at the laboratory bench in humans using the best clinical trial designs. To celebrate completing 21 years of service, Anne organized a trip to the Galapagos. She found an outfit with a boat and invited 20 of her best friends to go on the trip, including Nancy, her sister Alice, David Housman and his wife, Gill Bates and her husband, Alice Flaherty and her family, Anne’s daughter Ellen and her boyfriend and others. Anne became chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Nancy’s HDF, which entailed assigning grant reviewers, reviewing grants and running meetings. She was appointed chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Collaborative Center for XDP.

Atrocity crimes and grand corruption: the chapter argues that adopting a “corruption lens” is useful to characterize and understand patterns of crimes against humanity, especially whether acts are widespread or systematic, whether there is a state or organizational policy, how high-ranking actors are tied to crimes by subordinates (“modes of liability”) and whether specific acts constitute crimes under the ICC’s Rome Statute. The chapter uses examples from Mexico and Venezuela to illustrate.

This chapter analyzes the right in Venezuela under Chavismo. It argues that the main divide of Venezuelan politics is now between democracy and autocracy rather than the ideological left and right. As authoritarianism and repression have increased and Venezuela’s socioeconomic decline has worsened, right-wing movements and factions have prioritized competitiveness through a centrist approach over an emphasis on ideological purity.

This chapter expands on the previous chapter by presenting survey evidence from Morocco, Jordan, Venezuela, and the Ukraine using the same conjoint experiment of business political engagement. The chapter documents that Egypt's military has a higher level of penetration than even other Arab countries. In general, Arab countries seem to have more economically involved militaries than non-Arab countries. An additional pattern is that companies that have had to pay higher bribe costs in the past five years are more likely to engage in political action, suggesting that they are trying to protect their companies and their relationships with the government.

In the first half of the twentieth century, Latin America was a region of immigration, where people moved from one country to another and/or people came from other continents, mostly from Europe. But by the 1960s, when many Latin American countries were suffering economic downturns, and the 1970s and 1980s, when state repression intensified, immigration turned to emigration, and many began making their way to the United States. Today, Latin Americans continue to migrate to the United States; people from all over the globe migrate to Latin America; and people move within the region. It is one of the most complex challenges confronting the United States and Latin America, and remains a very divisive issue in most countries of the region, especially the United States. This chapter looks at the push and pull factors that lead people to move from their home countries to resettle elsewhere.

With the rise of Hugo Chávez and other presidents around the turn of the century, a new breed of leftist leaders challenged the postwar political and economic rules promoted by the United States. Many Latin American left-leaning governments openly used the language of dependency theory to depict their strategy. Joining together within both economic and political institutions that excluded the United States, they hoped that they could break the stranglehold of international capitalism and imperial designs. Strategies along these lines include trade agreements, the creation of international institutions, discussions of common currencies, and mutual aid. The ultimate goal of these various efforts is to establish political and economic autonomy from the United States. That would mean being freed from political interference, economic pressure, violations of sovereignty, or any other type of imposition from the hegemonic power. This chapter takes stock of the Latin American left’s ability to chart a course distinct from that preferred by the United States in the twenty-first century.

Up until the 1990s, Venezuela was one of the longest-running and most stable uninterrupted liberal democracies in Latin America. Today, it is an authoritarian regime. In nineteen years, Hugo Chávez and his successor, Nicolás Maduro, managed to destroy the system of checks and balances, end free and fair elections, and terminate political rights and civil liberties. The government has delayed and canceled elections, circumvented the authority of the elected legislature, imprisoned political opponents without trial, used lethal force against protesters, and banned opposition parties. How is it that Venezuela, historically one of the most robust democracies in the region, turned into the second most authoritarian country in Latin America?