Resumen

TOVAR, Jesús. The First Democracies in Hispano-America. Polít. gob [online]. 2009, vol.16, n.1, pp.71-113. ISSN 1665-2037.

This article helps to demonstrate the conceptual disparity among some authors about democracy. Despite sharing a procedural definition of democracy, they do not agree in how to fix the starting date of political regimes in Hispano-American democracies between the end of the xix and the beginning of the XX centuries. For this reason, we propose a criterion to classify the democracies and we apply this to Hispano-American countries during the first wave of democracy. We then make a comparative analysis of these early democracies. Finally, we create an explanatory outline that permits us to identify independent variables of democratic advance in this region in this particular time.

Palabras llave : democracy; first wave; competition; alternation; democratization; democratic breakdown; electoral reforms.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )