ABSTRACT
Starting in the 1980s and continuing through the 1990s, Latin American societies experienced a wave of transitions from authoritarian regimes to democratic civilian governments. Latin America lived the effects of the so called “third wave” of democratization, with transitions to competitive democracy in Ecuador (1979), Peru (1980), Bolivia (1982), Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1984), Brazil (1985), Paraguay (1989) and Chile (1990) (Huntington 1991, Wiarda 1990). In the light of this wave of transitions, the democratic landscape should have been highly promising for the region. However, there are still worries about the quality of the resulting regimes: shallow electoral democracies where governments may be elected by relatively free and fair elections, but in practice show a limited capacity to deliver essential political goods such as the protection of civil and political rights, self restraint authority and most of all, the consistent enforcement of the rule of law (Anglade 1994; Diamond 1999: 10; Foweraker, Landman and Harvey 2003: 90-1; Panizza 1995).
