Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe (review)

This is the fourth volume in a series sponsored by the Social Science Research Council of the United States and the American Council of Learned Societies, under the program title, "The Nature and Consequences of Democracy in the New Southern Europe." The previous volumes are: The Politics of Democratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective (Johns Hopkins University Press 1995), Parties, Politics and Democracy in the New Southern Europe (Johns Hopkins University Press 2001), and Economic Transformation, Democratization and Integration into the European Union: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave 2001). As such, the series is a major achievement. In the past, southern Europe had suffered from some neglect in comparative politics studies and its inclusion in comparative typologies often remains problematic. Thus, a series as substantive as this establishes scholarship of international quality and represents a contribution of lasting importance.

The present volume comprises a distinctive set of studies. An Introduction and Conclusion present a theoretical and historical frame in which to locate the individual chapters. There are studies on the evolution of the welfare state (sadly only until 1990), social policy and citizenship, the judiciary, state bureaucracies, multilevel governance (mostly Spain), environmental policy, and economic consolidation. The volume brings together an impressive team of experts, both old and new, from the region, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

The entire volume is couched within a frame of three major themes: socioeconomic modernization, democratization, and Europeanization. These themes are deployed as "three clusters of explanatory factors." It is argued upfront that Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain have each, in their own way, "succeeded in shedding their old, 'exceptionalist' identity as . . . the 'backwater of Europe'" and have assumed the characteristics of modernity "in the process of significantly approximating the general attributes associated with advanced (post)-industrial societies and democracies in Western and Northern Europe" (p. 27). This is a bold claim—major change and convergence have undoubtedly occurred—though their distinctiveness may be said to endure, albeit in a revised form. In the Conclusion, it is recognized that many points of a shared distinctiveness remain: corporatist protectionism in labor markets, the fragmentation and particularism of their welfare regimes, and the rigidities and "citizen-unfriendly" public administrations. That there is no single model of the southern European state, as is argued, is surely correct—although, as it is not so clear when the opposite was the case, the point is perhaps of less significance.

The previous point is related to another. A key conclusion of the volume—indeed, it is an issue addressed by the entire series—concerns the extent to which change in southern Europe has been so pronounced that it has actually led to these states "leap-frogging" their western and northern European neighbors. Authors in the second volume argued that in parties, campaign politics, and related aspects of electoral behavior, the states of southern Europe had skipped over the developmental stages experienced elsewhere to reflect more fully a new campaign politics. Contributors to the present volume argue something like the opposite for state institutions, public policy structures, processes, and outputs. Instead, inherited legacies have militated against change—reform has been protracted and incomplete. In particular, the "giant step forward" (p. 361) in southern Europe needs heavy qualification. The change in parties and campaign politics may also be questioned, by comparison. Charismatic, ill-defined catch-all electoral appeals have an embedded history, of course.

These contrasting patterns suggest the need to explore further the constraints on reform and, perhaps, by reference to other perspectives. The authors accept a loose "historical institutionalist" frame and this would seem to have more potential. Alternatively, rational interest models of veto-points and of veto-players might have offered useful insights into the structured constraints on reform capacity. Indeed, the wider comparative political economy literature—of the "varieties of capitalism" type—would seem relevant for explaining the impediments to further convergence...