摘要：At the end of twentieth century, many countries in Latin America have passed by processes of political transitions, encouraging several studies that aim to understand the phenomenon. Many of these studies have chosen the comparative analysis as research method, with the aim of identify the rules in the processes of political transition. However, this method was often criticized because of a lack of mathematical exactness and for working with the analysis of few cases. Nevertheless, the analysis of the most important comparative researches about political transitions in Latin America indicate that, despite the problems, this method gives results that are relevant to understanding the phenomenon. By this way, this article proposes to check the importance of the comparative method for the comprehension of the phenomenon and for the social sciences.
关键词：political transitions; Latin America; comparative method.
