Expected stability: rethinking democratic consolidation

Abstract

In the present article, the term "democratic consolidation" shall carry a specific and precise meaning: expected regime stability. In this sense, we can take a democracy to be consolidated as soon as we reach the conclusion that its probability of breakdown is very low, or the other way round, that its probability of survival is very high. In other words, democratic consolidation "reaches closure" when we, or any other relevant observers, "expect the democratic regime to last well into the foreseeable future" (Valenzuela 1992, 70). This definition makes explicit, in a clear and concise way, what most other concepts of DC struggle with in more obscure and implicit ways: the pivotal importance of probability estimates in the study of "democratic consolidation." In essence, the article develops and explains some strong and fundamental implications that follow from its initial conceptual decision to anchor the notion of DC in the soft grounds of expectations and probability calculations. It explains, thus, the prospective, continuous, descriptive, cognitive, and perspective-dependent nature of "democratic consolidation."