While during the 1960s the intellectual debate in Latin America centered on the paradigm of revolution, the central theme of the 1980s was political democracy (ch. 1). One of the main reasons for this profound normative and conceptual change was provided by the burocratic authoritarian regimes. The concrete experience of the repressive Leviathan led the left to revise its traditional statism and to assume the defense of liberal-democratic tradition (ch. 2). Furthermore and somewhat paradoxically, while forced into “survival strategies’ in external or internal’ exile, Latin-American social sciences experienced a creative period of internationalisation, professionalisation and intellectual opening (ch. 3). Its reappraisal of political democracy has been based on a resignification of politics. That implies a new emphasis on the democratic logic of politics opposed to the authoritarian Iogic of war, a less instrumental and more pluralistic vision of politics, and a rediscovery of Civil Society (ch. 4). A key problem posed to democratic theory resides in the problematic of political and social pacts. Among other difficulties, the concertation of the rules of the democratic game confronts the tension between form and content (pact and project) and between democratic reconstruction and democratic governability (ch. 5). The essay concludes with some observations on the latin-american socialist debate, on the crisis of socialist projects and identities (ch. 6).
