Santiago Anria is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at Dickinson College, Pennsylvania. His research focuses on social movements, political parties, and democracy in Latin America and has appeared in journals including Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, the Journal of Democracy, and Latin American Politics and Society. He received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

'Anria not only explains how social movements can give rise to political parties, but also offers a provocative challenge to the conventional wisdom that parties are necessarily oligarchic in their internal organization. Drawing from extensive field research on the Bolivian MAS and its movement bases, he shows how independent grass-roots actors can hold party leaders accountable to popular constituencies. This is path breaking work that forces scholars to reexamine time-worn assumptions about the relationships between parties and movements.' Kenneth M. Roberts, Richard J. Schwartz Professor, Cornell University, New York

• Introduction; 1. Theoretical framework and methods; 2. Origins and ascendance to power; 3. Candidate selection patterns; 4. National policymaking patterns; 5. The MAS in comparative perspective; Conclusions.