We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the volume 19/2026 of Anuario Latinoamericano – Ciencias Políticas y Relaciones Internacionales.

The Dossier, entitled ”Latin America: Successes, Failures, and Crises of Democracy”, coordinated by Gabriela Ippolito-O´Donnell (National University of San Martín, Argentina), Katarzyna Krzywicka (Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, Poland) and Esperanza Palma (Autonomous Metropolitan University, Mexico), commemorates the 40th anniversary of the publication of Transitions from Authoritarian Rule (O’Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead, 1986) while critically examining democracy’s precarious balance between successes and failures in the Latin American and Caribbean states.

Remarkably, Transitions anticipated several of today's global democratic dilemmas. The authors’ attention to uncertainty, the decisions of political actors, the role of oppositions movements in democratic transitions and the containment of autocratization, elite pacts, transitional justice, and the fragility of democratic advances foreshadowed challenges now seen worldwide. Crucially, the framework focused on strategic actors and their choices rather than structural determinism, which was a radical move at the time.

We invite critical contributions that engage with the legacy of Transitions framework while pushing beyond it. Adopting a broad multidisciplinary perspective, topics may include: authoritarian enclaves; elite pacts versus popular participation; the role of opposition movements in democratic transitions and the containment of autocratization; institutional performance, open justice, transparency and accountability; missing dimensions of gender, race, and indigenous politics; and the relationship between uneven development resulting from deliberate decisions and democratic quality.

We want to ponder what lessons Latin America's democratic experiment can offer the world. As democracies falter from Central and Eastern Europe to Southeast Asia and Africa, what can other regions learn from Latin America’s successes, failures, and enduring crises?

The closing date for submissions is August 30, 2026. The publication of the volume is scheduled for December 2026.

Articles (the length of the article should not exceed 40 000 characters, including bibliographical references) and book reviews (10,000 characters) must be submitted in Spanish or English. Information on editorial requirements can be found on the journal’s website:

https://journals.umcs.pl/al/about/submissions#authorGuidelines

We appreciate the dissemination of our call.