The democratic challenge

Abstract

From the challenge of democratization in the countries of the East and in Latin America, both for the process itself and for its political analysis. Hermet introduces himself into the socio-political contexts of these societies, their legacies, their particularities and the characteristics of their democratizing and reformist processes. Authoritarian legacies in Latin America and totalitarians in Eastern Europe determine the particularities of their democratic projects and processes in terms of the different relationships that have existed and influence the future political future between civil society and the State. These heritages, with important points of contact, are effectively different, which constitutes the challenge for their analysis. It is suggested, therefore, in a methodological exercise of comparative politics that the analysis between these two realities be done through transversal cuts and not opposing one another as is usually done, since in this way better results will be obtained.
Hermet attempts a classification based on the state of societies in Latin America and Eastern Europe that would allow them to be grouped into: dispossessed societies (which in the past have had a degree of development similar to those of the West), immature societies (countries that have not yet culminated its national construction), societies withdrawn (which were slowed down in the original modernizing impulse) and enemy societies (grouping ethnic conglomerates that have nothing to do with each other).