ABSTRACT
In 2005 all twenty Latin America countries except Cuba had an elected chief executive, suggesting that democracy had finally arrived as the dominant political regime in the region. Constructing and maintaining a democracy is not an easy matter anywhere. As the Latin American countries face a possible democratic future difficulties are likely to arise from a political tradition unfavorable to limited government, serious inequities of income distribution, the aftereffects of recent civil wars, and the absence of governments that can effectively implement policies for the nation as a whole. Most countries of Latin America made an impressive transition to electoral democracy during the 1980s, when the region's economies were in severe recession and plagued by foreign debt. In the 1990s most of the economies of the area began to recover, showing positive growth and being able to begin a process of economic reform to correspond with the earlier political reforms.
