This study aims to demonstrate the reasons why there is a prevailing difference in democratization between the south American countries Chile and Peru. By applying democratization researchers, Juan Linz, and Alfred Stepans framework: The Five Arenas of a Consolidated Democracy, and a causal mechanism. I discover an institutional and civil pattern which when functional, contributes to democratization. In the case of Chile, the results show that a strong rule of law and states apparatus, institutionally makes democracy the only game in town in Chile. However, in the case of Peru, the weak state apparatus and rule of law allows undemocratic forms of action which in part, can explain the difference in democratization. The results that emanate from the civil society, show that both countries suffer from weak connection to the political arena which in turn affects the economical arena. This also gives implications to the remaining democratizing challenges for Chile and Peru. The results however are affected by the strengths and shortcomings of Linz & Stepans framework which is also discussed in this study.

The aim of this thesis is to examine whether Venezuela's democratic decline could be explained by the consolidation theory of Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan. Between the years 2005 – 2017, the organization Freedom House concluded that Venezuela’s political and civil rights declined, resulted in that Freedom House classified Venezuela from “partly free” in 2005 to “not free” in 2017, and several scientists classified Venezuela year 2017 as an autocracy. The method is to apply the consolidation theory and its five arenas (the civil society, the political society, rule of law, state bureaucracy and economic society) in the case Venezuela between the years 2005 – 2017. Each arena contains different qualifications which are all needed for a state to transition from democracy to consolidated democracy. However, in this thesis the aim is to study if the consolidation theory is able to explain a state’s transition from democracy to autocracy. By using material as scientific articles and reports, it is concluded that each arenas’ qualifications have deteriorated between the years 2005 - 2017. Therefore, it is found that the consolidation theory works very well in explaining a state’s transition from democracy to autocracy, which in this case is Venezuela.