Central America's political regimes have changed enormously and repeatedly in
the late twentieth century. It took the United States two wars and two centuries of
evolution to move from authoritarian rule by Britain to constitutional democracy
with voting rights for the whole populace. In contrast, in less than two decades
Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala all traversed a similar political
distance from authoritarianism to civilian democracy -- although by different
paths. This places into dramatic relief the significance of what transpired in the
region. In less than the decade since we developed our original framework for un-
derstanding the region in the first edition of this book, so much has changed that
it has redefined what we must account for.

Our original goal and theory sought to explain the somewhat perplexing oc-
currence of revolutionary insurrections in three Central American countries in
the 1970s and 1980s, while two neighboring countries escaped such violent tur-
moil. ¹ Since then, the efforts and cooperation of Latin American powers, inter-
national institutions, and Central American governments ended the lengthy civil
wars in Nicaragua ( 1990), El Salvador ( 1992), and Guatemala ( 1996), and the
1990 election in Nicaragua terminated the Sandinista revolution. Elections dur-
ing the 1980s replaced the military regimes of Honduras, El Salvador, and
Guatemala with civilian governments.

Four of the region's five nations thus underwent dramatic, multiple regime
changes from the military authoritarian status quo of the 1970s to civilian de-
mocracy by the 1990s. How can one explain such extensive and far-reaching po-
litical transformation? One way is to set forth a theory that might draw together

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