Students of political democratization have employed the notion of “democratic consolidation” in unclear and inconsistent ways. The article reconstructs and reorders the multifaceted usage of the term. The meaning we ascribe to the “consolidation” of democracy, it argues, is both context-dependent and perspective-dependent. It derives from the type of political regime we study as well as from the type of regime we either want to avoid or to attain. Parting from this double distinction of empirical viewpoints and normative horizons, we may distinguish five different concepts of democratic consolidation: the avoidance of democratic breakdown; the prevention of democratic erosion; the organization of democracy; the completion of democracy; and the deepening of democracy.