Rethinking Political Transitions in Today's Latin America: From Regime Change to Violence Reduction

This publication is authored by IFIT expert Sebastián Guerra Sánchez While the region has largely moved beyond authoritarian rule and internal armed conflict, many countries now face a dual threat: the rise of powerful criminal networks and the steady erosion of institutional checks by elected leaders. These challenges demand a new way of thinking about political transitions – less as changes in political or post-conflict regime, and more as efforts to strengthen democratic resilience and reduce systemic violence. This publication maps the distinctive dilemmas of the current era and proposes a framework to respond. Drawing on lessons across the region, it identifies both immediate entry points and long-term goals for moving from weak to strong democracies and from high to low violence contexts. It is a call to redefine what transition means for today’s Latin America. (This publication is an English-language executive summary of Las transiciones políticas hoy en América Latina.)