Transition to Democracy

This week the readings mostly focused on how the Latin American governments were able to transition into a democratic form of government from their various authoritarian regimes. The readings explored the different aspects of how specific countries were able to go through a successful “transition” which is defined by O’Donnell and Schmitter as “the interval between one political regime and another”. Some of different ways that the scholars approached the subject was through the progressive decline of the roles of the militaries in the countries, and through the processes of liberalization, democratization, and socialization.

In Hunter’s account of how things were handled from a military standpoint, Hunter brings up four countries and how they dealt with dismantling/weakening the role of the military in different ways. It seemed as though the majority of countries began to dismantle the military and they went about that by allowing former/current military leaders to be prosecuted for human rights violations made during  the previous regimes. Also the Presidents of these new founded democracies allowed their citizens to heal by giving them at least some closure by prosecuting leaders in the old regimes. The specific cases that were brought up were Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Chile and each country went through similar yet very distinct processes. For example after Pinochet, Chile faced a lot of struggles because Pinochet had implemented many safeguards to keep conservative politicians in the government even after he was gone. So their government had to work harder to get rid of the overwhelming military presence compared to let’s say Brazil’s government. In most of the cases the lessening of the military power worked out well for the countries’ economies because such a large portion of the countries’ budgets were allocated to the military, that the cuts in the budgets actually allowed the countries to prosper, while at the same time removing the reminders of the old regimes. 

This article contrasted with the O’Donnell and Schmitter article that explored that the true democracies were only able to be prosperous after going through successful transition periods. And then once theses countries were able to go through liberalization, democratization and then socialization, they were able to fall into a true democracy with a much more lasting stability than the preceding regimes. This article explores how the countries can go through the processes at separate times and still end up with a democracy that that scholars consider to be “true”. For example they stress that authoritarian regimes could still go through liberalization where rights are being promoted but the government does not undergo any structural changes and the authoritarian remains in complete control.