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Palgrave Macmillan

Elites and Democratic Transitions by Regime Transformation in Southern Europe

  • Book
  • © 2022

Overview

Authors:
  1. Ioannis Tzortzis

    1. Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

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  • Based on use of British and US archives on all three cases
  • Provides new insights of democratic transitions by self-transformation of the non-democratic regimes in Southern Europe
  • Ties three case studies into the context of current cases of democratization around the globe

Part of the book series: Global Political Transitions (GLPOTR)

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Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xiv
    Download chapter PDF

  2. A Framework for the Study of Democratic Transition by Regime Transformation

    • Ioannis Tzortzis
    Pages 1-19

  3. From ‘Organic Democracy’ to ‘Democracy Without Adjectives’: Spain 1976–77

    • Ioannis Tzortzis
    Pages 21-71

  4. From Dictatorship to Dictatorship: Greece 1973

    • Ioannis Tzortzis
    Pages 73-127

  5. From Dictatorship to ‘Difficult Democracy’: Turkey 1983

    • Ioannis Tzortzis
    Pages 129-165

  6. Concluding Remarks

    • Ioannis Tzortzis
    Pages 167-184

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 185-207
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Keywords

About this book

This book examines three cases of democratic transitions by self-transformation of the non-democratic regimes in Southern Europe—the Spanish reforma pactada-ruptura pactada of 1976-77, the Greek “Markezinis experiment” of 1973, and the Turkish democratic transition of 1983—in a comparative perspective. The author argues that a democratic transition initiated by the regime elites is, in contrast to widely held assumptions and notwithstanding some reservations on whether democracy can be (re-)introduced by non-democrats, worth viewing as a “window of opportunity” for democratisation. It is up to the democratic counter-elites to respond to it, using the civil society and the international factor as allies to achieve their goal of acquiring more concessions from the regime.

Reviews

“Under what conditions do dictators initiate democratic regime transitions? When do these attempts succeed and why do they sometimes fail? In this meticulously researched book, Tzortzis seeks answers to the counter-intuitive question of authoritarian elite transitions to democracy. The book revisits the varied cases of Spanish, Greek and Turkish transitions by reforma in the 1970s and 1980s and their legacies. In his novel approach to the question, Tzortzis compares the successful Spanish transition with the failed attempt of liberalisation in Greece in 1973 and the imposed transition to a weak democracy in Turkey in 1983. The book focuses on three areas of contestation (inter-elite bargaining, elite and non-elite relations, and the international dimension) to explain divergent outcomes. In an era of democratic backsliding and rising populist authoritarianism, the book urges us to rethink past transitions and what the academic community has learned empirically and theoretically from them. In doing so, it shows the path to a peaceful and successful return to stable democracies in global politics.” (Prof. Yaprak Gursoy, Chair in Contemporary Turkish Studies of the European Institute of LSE, UK.)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK

    Ioannis Tzortzis

About the author

Ioannis Tzortis is Teaching Fellow in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Birmingham, UK.

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