CIAO DATE: 04/2009
December 2008
The Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies
In this paper we analyze the level of democracy achieved by 19 Latin American countries after 1977, in the period between the transitions from authoritarian rule and 2004. Our study shows enduring regime legacies: despite authoritarian interruptions in the past, the best predictor of the current level of democracy is the country’s experience with competitive politics during the “first” (1900–44) and the “second” (1945–77) waves (and counter waves) of democratization. We document the impact of regime legacies using a fixed-effects vector decomposition model. Our finding resembles, but does not strictly confirm, theoretical claims about “path dependence” in democratization.
Resource link: Regime Legacies and Democratization: Explaining Variance in the Level of Democracy in Latin America, 1978—2004 [PDF] - 1.3M