The spanish transition and the Arab Spring

EuroMeSCo Paper March 2012 (12)

Between the 1970s and 1990s the political changes that had taken place in Latin America and Southern Europe – and those underway in Eastern Europe – contributed to the proliferation of studies on transitions from authoritarian regimes or dictatorships to democratic systems. Establishing models of transition to democracy is academically advantageous. They help to differentiate the essential components of change, to compare, avoid errors, and even predict. Such processes form part of the past of certain countries and can be useful to others in a similar situation. However, for the peoples immersed in a process of political transition, contemporary events are more important, as they generate a difficult to measure contagion effect that, nevertheless, will be limited by the non-transferable characteristics of each process. An example of simultaneous political transitions can be found in some Southern European Mediterranean countries in the mid-1970s: Portugal, April 1974; Greece, June 1974; and Spain, November 1975.