The objective of this paper is to explain how the effects of the crisis of General Gustavo Rojas Pinilla’s authoritarian regime influenced the transition to the National Front (NF) in Colombia between 1954 and 1960. This case illustrates how the political and social problems unresolved or originated during the government of Rojas determined the mode of transition to the NF and the institutional design of coalition regime. The examination of this phenomenon of political change in the light of the theoretical and conceptual framework of democratic transitions required making periodization in transitional stages of the case study, analyzing the interaction between the actors, their strategies and the political processes in each stage, and using a series of key concepts to evaluate the transition to NF.
