Belén González & Sabine CareY

(University of Mannheim)

“The particulars of transitions from autocracies to democracies: Explaining the lack of escalating violence in Chile.”

How does actors’ composition in transitional governments affect the risk of escalating violence? Although scholarship on civil conflict focuses on theories that conceive political actors as unitary, in reality we observe that they host different factions which affect conflict dynamics and the risk of violence escalation. This article explores the role of the government and the opposition’s internal composition in transitional autocratic governments. It demonstrates that their sub-groups play a major role in determining the avoidance of violence escalation. We argue that when political actors have cohesion among sub-groups, they can ensure compliance to transitional concessions. Yet, when internal factions do not align in their political preferences, violence escalation becomes a threat to the transitional process. We analyse elite interviews with members from different factions within the government and the opposition in Chile’s transition from a military regime to a civilian government. Results shed lights on why Chile did not experience an escalation of violence when actually the unsettled political context met the requisite of conflict theories.