Economic crisis and the transitions to democracy: Spain and Portugal - a comparison

Abstract

The article studies the effects or repercussions that the 1973 international economic crisis may have had on the processes of democratisation in Portugal and Spain in the middle of that decade. The article does not analyse reciprocity in the relationships between the two changes of system and their respective economic circumstances. Rather, the author investigates whether the economic crisis was a factor that caused these developments; and, if so, which were the mechanisms, processes, and people involved. The economic crisis is to a certain extent scorned by the literature, and has mostly been studied using a strictly economic approach, or is understood to have underpinned the two transitions. It was seen as a destabilising element for young democracies, vulnerable because of their youthfulness and the problems that swept over them. In the case of Spain, in addition to the recession, these obstacles were terrorist violence and the apathy and «political cynicism» of the citizens. Writers on Portugal emphasise that the worsening of the economy was a result of the revolutionary policies applied from the third to the fifth provisional governments. However, the 1973 international economic crisis was analysed merely as a possible element in constraining or promoting démocratisation in the peninsula.