The road to democracy : Understanding the democratization process in Chile and Mozambique

Abstract: The topic of this essay is how countries can successfully democratize in different ways. The aim is to demonstrate how two vastly different countries as Chile and Mozambique were capable of democratizing through what at first glance looks like dissimilar ways, while at the same time trying the robustness of a known democratization theory. In this case study, I use a combination of qualitative, historical and process-tracing methods to get an in-depth understanding as I compare my two cases and measure them against Larry Diamond's theory. His theory is based upon internal- and external factors that play essential parts in democratization. My overall inference is that Chile meets essentially all theoretical expectations while Mozambique barely has more than half of the examined theoretical factors with at least somewhat favorable conditions. I also discovered that they share at least one important factor where they have plenty in common, democracy assistance. In addition to this, I also gained a new insight. Diamond's theory doesn't account for whether a country has a previous history of democracy. This appears to have played at least a significant part in many of his theoretical factors, and it's absolutely something that should be considered for the future.