Retirement Party Word

Review the concept of "democratic transition": The democratic transition leads abandoning the old rules of politics and causes the emergence of new political actors and new strategic configurations

The democratic transition has two phases to distinguish clearly:

• The political transition, which means "passage from one regime to another."
• The consolidation of democracy during which the challenge is to ensure a relatively stable democratic process in the transition.

Democratic transition led to the abandonment of the old rules of politics and causes the appearance new political actors and new strategic configurations. This transition is complete when "a government comes to power as a direct result of free and popular vote, when this government has a sovereign power to generate new public policies, and when the executive, legislative and judicial born the new democracy has failed to share power with other bodies of law. "(1)

As the consolidation process, it implies, under rules of politics now well defined, not only redistribution of political maps as well new tactics of play

Conflict management by way of democracy can not be understood as the elimination of conflict. Rather, democracy must allow for the manifestation of the various political interests involved, leaving all players the opportunity to find a voice of expression. The opening of the political system is therefore a major issue in the context of the consolidation of democracy in a country. The new Latin American regimes are thus faced with the challenge of further opening up their political system to players who do not necessarily participated in the transition. Conversely, the parallel challenge is to create a sufficiently high level of consensus in order to avoid a political setback and thereby ensure the survival of new schemes. In other words, governments must establish effective safeguards to maintain the democratic regime with the support of both civil society, other political actors and armed forces.

transition and consolidation of democracy are thus two processes that evolve according to the choices of key actors in a country. These two moments part, we have seen in different contexts and lead to the actors, issues separate. But these two situations are still linked: we can not claim understanding the process of consolidation of democracy without taking into account the crisis situation before the transition and the conditions surrounding the political transition process itself.

By DELCAMP Nathalie, a French citizen, lived six years in Argentina (Buenos Aires), before returning to France to do his graduate studies. Holds a Master of European Law - Obtained at the University of Paris II Assas - and a Master degree in International Relations, Conflict Resolution - PKI

(1): Juan J. Linz Democratic Transitions and Democratic Consolidation , mimeo, July 1991, p.2.