Pact-Making, Bargaining, and Institutional Choice

Abstract

Negotiated transitions to democracy and the pact-making that defines it are at bottom a “struggle ... to define rules and procedures whose configuration will determine likely winners and losers in the future” (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986, 6).This raises two sets of questions.The first concerns the outcome of the struggle.What exactly are the rules and procedures that define winners and losers in the democratic game? The second is the struggle itself. What is the nature of this struggle among transition actors and what determines who wins it?