Latin America’s Third Wave: Measuring and Explaining Variations Across Seventeen Nations

The author would like to thank Keith LaFoe for his excellent assistance in the elaboration of the figures in this paper. 2 Introduction In recent years, numerous scholarly analysts have sought to determine the trajectory of the third democratic wave in Latin America. 1 The onset of the third wave in the region is widely dated as 1978, when civilian leadership was elected in the Dominican Republic; the last nation of the region to be caught by the wave was in 1990, when a new civilian president was inaugurated in Chile. Since 1990, scholars have debated whether the tide continues to flow or has begun to ebb in the region. 2 The premise of this work is that an assessment of democratic progress in Latin America as a whole is viable. Although I agree that it is important to assess democratic progress in the region as a whole, the premise of this paper is that it is also important to explore the wide variations in progress across the seventeen nations of the region. In other words, the democratic tide has continued to flow in some nations, has crested in others, and ebbed in several; especially now that more than ten years has elapsed since all Latin American nations (with the probable exception of Mexico and the certain exception of Cuba in the Caribbean), it is time for rigorous analysis of these variations. To date, most scholarly analyses that have assumed considerable variations in democratic progress in the region have not attempted quantitative assessment and have emphasized primarily the larger Latin American nations. 3 The paper first seeks to establish an index for the measurement of democratic progress in the region. To date, the primary indicator of democratic progress in empirical research on the region has been Freedom House's rankings of political rights and civil liberties. It is contended here that additional indicators are appropriate. I propose an index composed of four indicators—the Freedom House rankings of political rights and civil liberties, the Freedom House rankings of press freedom worldwide, the Chile-based Latinobarometro public-opinion survey item on citizens' satisfaction with democracy, and the occurrence or non-occurrence of the interruption of the constitutional order or a 3 major threat to its interruption. Based on their scores on these indicators, the Latin American nations' democratic progress are classified as " excellent, " " good, " " moderate-to-good, " " moderate, " or " …