Southern Europe

This text compares the historical, political and socio-economic aspects of Southern Europe. It argues that understanding the nature of the change and the specific characteristics of the area comes from an understanding of the inter-twining of economic growth and social and political dynamics.

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Part 1 of this book synthesizes in chapter 1 the specific characteristics of Southern Europe and gives an overview of the theses presented for consideration. The second chapter deals with foreign politics and the international collocation of the countries under study, as these two factors have had great historical influence. In part 2 of the book, the central theme is the social implications of economic growth. Chapter 3 covers emigration and return migration. This is possibly the most significant social aspect of the central theme. Chapter 4 is devoted to the enormous changes in the rural societies of Southern Europe. The central theme of chapter 5 is an investigation of the various roads to industrialization which covers economic growth and the advent of capitalist markets. Chapter 6 is an analysis of the effects of capitalist markets, and the relation between economy and society, defined as induced capitalism, which developed in the countries of Southern Europe. The specific socio-economic formation of the area is derived from the inter-twining of tradition and modernity with capitalist forms of production and forms of pre-modern social reproduction.
Part 3 deals with an analysis of the political society expressed by the specific socio-economic aspects of the area. Chapter 7 presents the neo-caciquist model as the key to understanding the links between strong clientship, low political institutionalization and weak parties which exist in these countries. Chapter 8 presents an analysis of the various Southern European dictatorships. The analysis covers the differences in their growth, their development and the various reasons for their collapse, and reaches the conclusion that the consolidation of democracy was atypical. Chapter 9 discusses the rapidity with which ideological polarization was overcome and democracy was learnt in these countries until the end of the 1980s. The fourth, and concluding, part of the book examines the unsolved problems which reveal the process of modernization without development which is common to the whole area. This process is seen in the lack of relationship between economic growth and political institutionalization.