ABSTRACT
In the 1980s and 1990s, transitology, as a theoretical and analytical tool, triggered considerable interest in Latin American affairs and in the literature about Latin America more generally. This was the result of the special conjuncture the region had gone through, as well as the fact that most of the scholars addressing the issues were Latin Americans or Latin Americanists. The seminal work that sparked this rich literature was the four-volume work edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe Schmitter and Laurence Whitehead, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule, and, in particular, the final volume Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies written by O’Donnell and Schmitter. In this concluding volume, O’Donnell and Schmitter offer a theoretical, analytical and normative synthesis that draws upon the contributions in the previous volumes. Perhaps more importantly they offer a roadmap for the transitions in Latin America, both as reflection based upon historical experiences and as a sort of inventory of ‘good practices’ that democratic political forces could ignore only at their peril. For these authors, transitions, aptly defined as ‘uncertain’, are characterised as an interval between two regime types – an authoritarian regime and a new one that may not necessarily be democratic. In fact, a ‘transition’ in this sense could lead to a revolutionary outcome, a mere liberalising opening or even a regression to a new authoritarian system.1 O’Donnell and Schmitter characterise the period of transition as unpredictable. Far from prefiguring the emergence of democratic regimes, they see transitions as highly dependent upon the strategies chosen by the main political actors which redefine the political game, its rules and in the end the entire political system.
