The Relationship between the political elite and democracy:

rethinking the role of radicalism in democratic stability

Abstract

In recent decades, several analyzes have pointed out the role of the political elite in
Latin America, with emphasis on the works of Linz and Stepan (1978) and O’Donnell
and Schmitter (1986). In the 21st century, Mainwaring and Pérez-Liñán (2013) resumed the
perspective of the previous authors about the importance of understanding how
the attitudes of the political elite can help to strengthen a democratic regime or
take it to a break. The work of O'Donnell and Schmitter (1986) is a study
comparative study focused specifically on transitions from authoritarian regimes to
some other type of regime, such a transition can be either the establishment of a
democracy as a way of restoring another type of authoritarian regime
(O'DONNELL and SCHMITTER, 1986). The work advances the debate on the role of the elite by going
in addition to the importance of the role of the opposition, as it also highlights how disputes
between the hard-liners and the soft-liners of the different regimes influenced the processes
of “transition”, “liberalization” and “democratization”.