Peru 2013: The paradox of stability

This paper is a review of the main political events of 2013 in Peruvian politics. Peru is a democracy without parties sustained in a weak state, which limits the capacity of politicians to establish stable linkages with citizens, but has not had serious consequences for the stability of the political regime. On the one hand, this discredited, fragile and fragmented political elite coexists with an influential economic technocracy, strengthened by the good economy performance of recent years. On the other, this gap separating state and society makes the surprising (and precarious) Peruvian stability coexist with signs of discontent among urban sectors which reject the political system and are besieged by insecurity; while, the existence of fragmented episodes of mobilization in rural areas show the flipside of economic growth sustained in the boom of commodities.