Objective/context:

The work presents a case study of the democratization in Paraguay and debates the hypotheses of an incomplete transition and a stable low-quality democracy. It presents and analyses the transition since 1989, based on the first analytical models of the process, with the development of the institutional structure, the behavior of the main political actors of the process, and citizen behavior.

Methodology:

The case study undertakes a periodization of the transition in Paraguay, listing the main events and actors. Institutional capacity was examined using the data contributed by the IDD-Lat from 2002 to 2016, whereas citizen behavior was analyzed based on Latin American data from between 1995 and 2016.

Conclusions:

the low institutional quality and negative citizen behavior towards the regime appear to maintain a relatively stable situation of authoritarian political culture and weak institutions that can be characterized as democratic, but one of low quality that lacks any perspective for change.

Originality:

Studies on democracy in Paraguay, commonly analyze the development of the institutional structure, institutional capacity or citizen behavior. The proposal of this study is to consider a joining of the perspectives based on the analytical proposals for institutional precarization, together with an attempt at the periodization of the stages of the democratic transition in Paraguay, relating the phases with the process of institutional precarization.