Week 5: Transitions to Democracy-From Authoritarianism

The transitions to democracy from authoritarianism marked an interesting time period for Latin America. This week’s readings do quite an effective job in analyzing different aspects of these transitions. O’Donnell and Schmitter make very interesting arguments in their piece on transitions. They are unique in referring to these transitions as ones that shift from certain authoritarian regimes to an uncertain “something else”. That “something” could be either political democracy or a new, and sometimes worse and more severe, authoritarian regime. They note three themes characteristic of studying these transitions. The first is that the achievement of democracy involves the achievement of a desired goal. The second is that there is almost always an uncertainty of transition and obstacles to successfully transitioning, such as facing ethical dilemmas and hastily making political decisions. These transitions are seen by many as the government going from the “order” of an authoritarian regime to “disorder”. This involves the revival of everything that authoritarian regimes suppressed such as creativity, hope, self-expression, and freedom. The last theme is that “normal science methodology” has traditionally been used to study established, in this case, authoritarian, political regimes. This involves the use of economic, social, and cultural categories to identify, analyze, and evaluate the identities and strategies of those defending the status quo and those attempting to alter it. This has been deemed inappropriate in rapidly changing situations because of factors such as the increasingly free expression of interests and ideals and shifts in the configuration of power.

Karl focuses on what conditions make democracy possible and thrive. Karl’s arguments mirror those of O’Donnell and Schmitter. He makes a similar point by stating that theorists now focus on the process of political transition as opposed to merely searching for prerequisites. This is very similar to O’Donnell and Schmitter’s point that the normal science science methodology is outdated and very narrow. He also argues that theorists can no longer only examine the shift from authoritarianism to democracy in general, but must also identify different types of democracy that emerge and analyze their political, economic, and social consequences.

Hunter provides a unique argument in terms of government transition and the role of the military in that. He claims that the mode-of-transition perspective expects persistent military influence because of institutional structures that the military had in place during regime transition, especially since Latin American militaries have a history of maintaining control over the democratization process because they were so involved in democratic politics. Hunter uses politicians’ self-interests to show that in the case of Brazil, the military’s influence had diminished under the new democracy and that unrestrained electoral competition has eroded the military’s political strength. He argues that politicians’ have disregarded the military’s insistence on restricting popular participation. Interestingly, he compares the cases of Argentina, Chile and Peru to analyze the mode-of-transition model as opposed to the electoral-dynamic model. His conclusions are that democracy diminished the military’s political influence in all three countries, the electoral-dynamic argument helps account for differences in the downward trend of military influence, and that the modes-of-transition argument is important in explaining the starting points of said downward trend.

In conclusion, the first two pieces are quite similar in arguing that one cannot study transitions from authoritarianism to “democracy” in Latin America with a narrow mentality that has a simple definition of democracy. Hunter analyzes a different perspective: one of the role of the military in these transitioning regimes.