Democratization in South America: a national or a regional process?

Abstract

This paper demonstrates how the South American nations democratized as a region. When one wants to know why democratization movements seem to know a regional simultaneity, the available literature leaves one unsatisfied. Two hypotheses were used in this paper, reading that there are certain universal regional processes that promote and demote democratization and that there are distinct sequences of mechanisms leading to (de-) democratization. By implementing the “momentum model” we saw that there were regional processes influencing democratization in South America, such as the strength of left-wing armed factions and U.S. foreign policy. The model also demonstrated that the tension between public endorsement of democracy and foreign support for non-democracy can be regarded as the main factors influencing democratization.