The proto‐science of consolidology: can it improve the outcome of contemporary efforts at democratization?

ABSTRACT

The wave of democratization that began in 1974 and that seems to have crested in the mid‐1990s has encouraged the development of two proto‐sciences within political science: transitology and consolidology. This article explores some on the founding principles of the latter with the hope of contributing to the likelihood that more of the over forty polities that have “transited” from various forms of autocracy will succeed in consolidating some type of democracy. It concludes that, despite some unavoidable regressions and the inevitable desencanto (disenchantment), more democracies than ever before will manage to consolidate themselves. However, this very success — far from pressaging “the end of history” — will lead to renewed questioning and criticism of the actual practices of liberal democracy. Democracy consecrated will become democracy contested as we enter the next century.