The Uncertain Paths of Transitology: Strategic Choices, Historical Sequences, Bifurcations and Path Dependence Processes

Explores how diverse approaches to the field of transitology try to explain unresolved questions in transitions to democracy, focusing on connections between transitions' historical paths & the results, the significance of the past & its role as a determining factor, bifurcations in transitions' trajectories, the importance of critical junctures, the need to avoid methodological exceptionalism, & what constitutes a consolidated democratic system. The distinct approaches to these questions taken by the schools of classic transitology & path dependence are noted, with attention to their research foci & explanatory principals. D. Weibel