During the past two decades, there has been a widespread movement away from authoritarian rule towards democratic rule particularly among developing countries. This often occurs against a backdrop of the adoption of market oriented reforms and severe economic crises. The coincidence of these events seems to raise some long standing questions about the relationship between political and economic change. Some of these questions include: What role has economic crises played during the current wave of democratization and political liberalization?; Can new democracies manage the complex political challenges which are posed by economic reform?, and; Under what intuitional and economic is democracy most likely to be consolidated?
Drawing on the experiences of twelve Latin American and Asian countries and contemporary political economics, a new approach to understanding democratic transitions may be developed.
The relationship between authoritarian withdrawal and economic crisis must be analyzed and then the intuitional and economic properties of authoritarian rule and how they affect the capacity of the new democratic governments to initiate and sustain the economic reform policy must be examined. Finally, the consolidation of economical and political reform over the long run must be analyzed. The mediating role of representative intuitions particularly in political parties, the interests and power of contending social groups, the relationship between economic conditions must not be overlooked in the analysis.
Much of the current transition literature seems to point to the peaceful nature of the third wave of democratization. The end result is that there is a complete lack of information with regard to political violence and the role it has in democratic transitions. The question is; does political violence help or hinder the process of transition to a democratic society? There are political violence instances that happen within the transition phase that are as important to understand as are instances of non violent transitions since to understand only one type of transition means the misunderstanding of the peculiar and unique nature of transitions. The gap that the current literature is that it fails to identify the role of political violence has on countries that are moving towards democratic rule. This has mistakenly resulted in some rather vague generalizations that violence can only be detrimental to the prospect of democracy. There are currently five transitions in which violence occurred; East Timor, Romania, South Africa, El Salvador, and Portugal. The implication of the sub fields of international relations and comparative politics is truly is an intra disciplinary discussion on violence and transitions. How the absence or presence of political violence affects democratic transitions may very well be altered and the research may indeed show that democracy can very possibly arise alongside violence.