Transitology and the “New” European South
Οne of the most dramatic turning points in twentieth-century southern European history was the transition from authoritarian to democratic rule in Spain , Portugal and Greece in the mid-1970s, namely the processes that brought about the end of the Francoist regime (1936/1939–1975), the Salazar-Caetano regime of Estado Novo (1933–1974) and the military dictatorship of the Colonels in Greece (1967–1974). What did these distinct processes of democratisation —the Transición in Spain (spearheaded by Adolfo Suárez following the death of General Francisco Franco in Spain in November 1975), the “revolutionary process” in Portugal (put forth by the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 that overturned Marcelo Caetano, paving the way to democratic elections ) and the Greek regime change, dubbed Metapolitefsi (provoked by the militaries handing over power to the seasoned conservative politician Konstantinos Karamanlis in July 1974)—have in common? To begin with, all were invariably hailed as “success stories” of democratisation . Despite the complexities and discrepancies of each individual case, in the years that followed these transitions, all three countries shifted their political focus from the failures of said processes, to their achievements, postponing a deep analysis of the afterlives and legacies of the authoritarian past. Spain, Portugal and Greece promoted a pacific consolidation of democracy, sacrificing, at the same time, the construction of historical memory and the promotion of reflexivity on the role played by their respective civil societies and by European players and institutions. This took place in varying degrees, with Spain leading the way in looking toward what promised to be a radiant future, rather than back at the bleak and divisive political past.
Academic analysis of the three transitions tended to follow the trends set by the early “transitology” approach of the 1960s and 1970s, and especially the works of political scientists Seymour Martin Lipset, Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba, Robert Dahl, and Dankwart Rustow, who focused on consensus and pacts between elites as a precondition for successful transition to democracy. 1 During the early 1980s, scholars focusing especially on Spain , such as Paul Preston and Raymond Carr in the UK and Juan Pablo Fusi, Javier Tusell and Manuel Tuñon de Lara in Spain, followed the lead of such interpretations. 2 Furthermore at the end of the Cold War, scholars revived studies on regime change in order to deal with new case studies. The three Southern European cases were accordingly hailed as ideal examples of what Samuel Huntington famously labelled the “third wave of democratisation ”. 3 The Spanish case of “pacted transition” in particular was studied the most and was seen as an “exportable” 4 type of a negotiated transition to Argentina and Chile during and after their respective transitions and to post-Communist Eastern Europe after 1989. 5
The above studies described the democratisation process in Spain as the extraordinary result of a negotiated pact between the moderate and reformist sections of Francoism and anti-Francoism. A great deal of attention was paid to the role of political elites in setting the pace of the democratisation processes in Portugal and Greece as well, despite the fact that the collapses of the Estado Novo and the Colonels’ regime were triggered by dynamics generated by overseas conflicts (in the African colonies and Cyprus, respectively). For Gunther, Puhle and Diamandouros, “the democracies which emerged in ‘The New Southern Europe ’ took on added salience and presented themselves as invaluable objects for social science analysis”. 6 Such interpretations, based on the idea of “velvet” processes, were not formulated by chance: they emerged during and after the end of the transitions, entering indirectly into public debate, and became vehicles of the consolidation processes that served to legitimise the path chosen by the respective political leaderships. The same interpretations were also utilised at the onset of the so-called Second Cold War (1979–1985) to reinforce the international allegiance and state linkage of the three countries to the western side. 7
Similarly, the bulk of the research conducted on the eve of the twenty-first century on this “New Southern Europe ” lacked any consideration of grassroots movements and civil society as decisive ingredients of democratisation . 8 With a few notable exceptions, new research turned toward the role of leadership and decision-making processes, on the evaluation of the possible correlation between certain types of transition and political systems shaped after the end of authoritarianism and the factors which act as promoters or inhibitors of transitions. The conclusion drawn was that there were no established rules to be followed and that no actor was essential. Inside each national case study, the democratic emergence derived from a specific combination of causes that cannot possibly be reproduced. 9 A number of scholars, particularly of history and sociology, such as Josep Fontana and José Vidal-Beneyto on Spain , Manuel Loff and Diego Palacios Cerezales on Portugal , or Dimitris A. Sotiropoulos and Serafeim Seferiadis on Greece, 10 who had criticised the insufficiency of elite analysis for a global comprehension of the processes, promoted the idea of the singularity of each individual process. Many embarked on new research fields, focusing on specific aspects of the transitions, such as the role of the military, political parties or trade unions , embedded in their own reality. A number of interdisciplinary works cutting across history, political science and sociology focused on public opinion, the involvement of international actors and the major impact of neighbouring countries’ transitions on one another. Moreover an increasing number of scholars moved away from the earlier structuralist approaches, and acknowledged the necessity to account for both “uncertainty” and “agency” in transitional processes, corresponding to Niccolò Machiavelli’s “fortuna” and “virtù”, to quote Philippe Schmitter. 11 Indicative of this shift of focus were the works by Nancy Bermeo on Portugal and on post-transition protests in Southern Europe in general, by Philippe Schmitter on the role of interest-groups during the democratic transition and consolidation in Southern Europe, by Victor Pérez Díaz on civil society during and after the transition to democracy in Spain , by Robert M. Fishman on the role of labour representatives in the transition to democracy in Spain, by Sidney Tarrow on mass mobilisation and the impact of popular power in regime change in Spain, and by Pamela Radcliff on the impact of neighbourhood and other social movements in Spain during the Transition. 12
All the above studies challenged to some extent the foundational political myths of the respective democracies, but did not manage to introduce new paradigms in academic narratives before the early 2000s. Influential historians maintained that Spain undertook a masterful transition to democracy, while political scientists in Greece did the same as far as the Greek Metapolitefsi was concerned. 13 Finally, in Portugal too, the Revolution was hailed by historians as a solid step in a successful transition from an authoritarian regime to a democratic one. 14 This was in spite of the fact that praise tended to focus on either 25 April 1974, namely the day of the outbreak of the Revolution, or on the aftermath of decolonisation, rather than on the more complex PREC period that marked the 19 months of revolutionary governance (25 April 1974–25 November 1975). Despite the abovementioned challenges to these political and academic narratives, the latter seemed to be rather well-consolidated into the first decade of the new millennium.
The Crisis as Caesura
The onset of the European sovereign crisis that began in 2008 triggered renewed criticism and delegitimisation attempts of these “success story ” narratives. It generated important public rereadings of the political transitions from authoritarian to liberal democratic rule. Few of these revisions were flattering for either the established tropes of transitology or the national narratives regarding the transitions and consolidation of the countries that were once considered to be “a unique laboratory for the testing of propositions relevant to theories of redemocratisation and democratic stability”. 15 Almost ten years since the onset of the economic crisis, there is a widespread sense of a structural connection between current politics and political transitions as parts of the same historical cycle that now seems to be coming to an abrupt close. While the social welfare paradigm in the European South has reached its limits, the collapse of bipartisan political systems, the rise of new political actors, such as Podemos in Spain and Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal , and the reinforcement of others, such as SYRIZA in Greece, further calls for a novel reflection on the recent past.
Hence, in all three countries the emerging problems on the quality of Southern European democracies linked with unstable majorities, weak governances, corruption and clientelism in the administrative sector and the increasing gap between trade unions and political parties , were attributed to the weakness of the institutional and political changes made during the transitional or post-transitional periods. Claims regarding residual traces of the nondemocratic legacies of the past became common in political and public discourse. In Spain, a major criticism was uttered on the very nature of the transition as a pact between old and new political elites that foreclosed transitional justice and especially the recognition of the victims of the Francoist dictatorship. The supposed co...