ABSTRACT
The stunning failure of autocratic regimes in the 1980s and early 1990s prompted refocused attention on the problem of government breakdown and regime transitions. Samuel Huntington presents guidelines for dealing with former leaders, this chapter focuses on what transition leaders actually did to their coercive predecessors. The sudden increase in semi-presidential countries causes new problems for existing propositions in political science. One of the most critical dilemmas for transition leaders is deciding whether to punish former repressive leaders of the country. Economic reform is politics. It involves elites, but it affects more directly and intensively average citizens than do democratization policies. Regime collapse therefore stems from an active minority. At the moment when the regime can neither repress nor co-opt these activists the pathway opens either to collapse or to negotiation for a transition. If transition leaders can expedite the process of institutional design, all other reforms follow more smoothly and rapidly.
