The Latin American Paradox: Convergence of Political Participation and Social Exclusion HANS-JÜRGEN BURCHARDT T. H. Marshall’s classic text»Citizenship and Social Class,« in which he discusses the interconnectedness of civil, political, and social rights, stipulates a positive relationship between democracy and social inclu­sion. The former provides a basis on which the losers of – socially polar­izing – market processes can claim and obtain social rights. In fact, the experience of Western Europe exhibits an evolutionary pattern with regard to the expansion of the right to vote, followed by the expansion of the welfare state, which led to a marked decrease in income and wealth disparities in society. Marshall’s insight that the exercising of civil and political rights must be supplemented by additional social rights has become an unquestioned normative tenet in the industrialized coun­tries. This seems to confirm the notion of a causal link between demo­cratic participation rights and the granting of social rights. Latin America Does Not Fit the Theory of Democratic Inclusion However, this causal link does not seem to exist in Latin America. At the beginning of the twenty-first century and, thus, after three decades of democracy, Latin America still has the world’s highest rates of inequality (together with Sub-Saharan Africa). In fact, high rates of inequality can be considered as a long-standing Latin American characteristic, encoun­tered throughout the region(Lopez/ Perry 2008). It is true that, in recent years, there have been slight decreases in social inequality. In 2009, however, after five years of economic prosperity, the level of inequality was 60 percent higher in Latin America than in the oecd countries overall. Even Costa Rica and Uruguay, for a long time the two Latin American countries with the lowest income disparities, considerably exceed the levels reached by highly unequal Western Euro­pean and East Asian states( eclac 2009; undp 2009; Bourguignon/ 40 Burchardt, Latin American Paradox ipg 3/2010