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Spanish and Latin American Transitions to Democracy

Edited by Carlos H. Waisman and Raanan Rein
Carlos H. Waisman is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Reversal of Development in Argentina: Postwar Counter-revolutionary Policies and their Structural Consequences (Princeton University Press, 1987) [winner of the Hubert Herring Prize to the best book in Latin American studies]; Institutional Design in New Democracies: The Cases of Eastern Europe and Latin America (co-edited with Arend Lijphart, Westview Press, 1996); Globality and Multiple Modernities (co-edited with Luis Roniger, Sussex Academic, 2002); and a large number of articles and book chapters. Raanan Rein is Professor of Spanish and Latin American History and the Director of the Institute for Latin American History and Culture at Tel Aviv University. He is the author of numerous books and articles in various languages, including The Franco–Perón Alliance: Relations Between Spain and Argentina, 1946–1955 (Pittsburgh, 1993; Madrid, 1995; Buenos Aires, 2003); In the Shadow of the Holocaust and the Inquisition: Israel’s Relations with Francoist Spain (Tel Aviv, 1995; Madrid, 1996; London, 1997); Argentina, Israel and the Jews (Buenos Aires, 2001; Tel Aviv, 2002; Bethesda, MD, 2003).

“The first process of political change of the third wave opened up new terrain for analysis in the social sciences, later incorporating the experiences of central and Eastern Europe. The transitions to democracy from socialism eclipsed for a while the attention on development in Latin America. Here, the political and academic agenda had moved on to give priority to the question of democratic governability. The volume by Waisman and Rein revisits this process, and does so from three perspectives. It takes on a comparative view, it adds to the analysis of the lessons learnt from Europe in the decade starting from 1989, and it has the benefit of hindsight in terms of knowing that there was no turning back following the transitions in Spain and Latin America and that these processes evolved with considerable political success. No doubt this historical perspective contributes to the lucidity with which the book discusses the evolution of democratic process. Waisman, in this sense, introduces an innovative explanatory factor in the analysis which is undoubtedly significant in understanding the enormous differences between the Spanish and Latin American experiences.” Journal of Latin American Studies

This volume compares the Spanish and Latin American “double transitions” to liberal democracy and an open-market economy. Spain’s transitions in the 1960s–1980s have become the paradigmatic case of successful institutional transformation, and thus the standard for the evaluation of the economic and political change in Latin America and Central/Eastern Europe in the 1980s and 1990s. Even though most Latin American countries have transformed their economies and polities in recent decades, and the outcomes of this transformation have been variable, few of these countries have so far established solid liberal democracies and dynamic open economies.

The essays in this book, written by distinguished specialists, examine the different trajectories in Spain and several nations in Latin America, and seek to explain the different outcomes. In the large recent literature on transitions, this is the first systematic comparison between Spain and the Latin American cases.

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