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Dealing with the Legacy of Authoritarianism: The "Politics of the Past" in Southern European Democracies

In recent years the agenda of how to ‘deal with the past’ has become a central dimension of the quality of contemporary democracies. Many years after the process of authoritarian breakdown, consolidated democracies revisit the past either symbolically or to punish the elites associated with the previous authoritarian regimes. New factors, like international environment, conditionality, party cleavages, memory cycles and commemorations or politics of apologies, do sometimes bring the past back into the political arena.This book addresses such themes by dealing with two dimensions of authoritarian legacies in Southern European democracies: repressive institutions and human rights abuses. The thrust of this book is that we should view transitional justice as part of a broader ‘politics of the past’: an ongoing process in which elites and society under democratic rule revise the meaning of the past in terms of what they hope to achieve in the present.  

Book

Rethinking the Nature of Fascism

Revisiting the major themes of research into, and interpretation of, the nature of fascism that have been developed over the past few decades, some of the foremost experts in the study of European fascism have united in this volume to provide a contemporary analysis of the theories and historiography of fascism. During the past twenty years the comparative study of fascism has moved from a 'sociological' to a more 'political' perspective, giving both ideology and culture much more importance than was previously the case. On the other hand, this area has become more restricted in disciplinary terms, with historians clearly dominating over sociologists and political scientists. This book asks about the most recent debates on the subject and how the changes that have taken place in the social sciences over the past forty years have impacted on the study of fascism.

Book

The Europeanization of Portuguese Democracy

Driven primarily by political concerns to secure democracy, Portugal’s accession to the EU in 1986 also served as a catalyst for dynamic economic development following a complex process of democratization and the decolonization of Europe’s last empire. This book analyses how the European Union has helped shape the political process in Portugal on key institutions, elites, and its citizen’s attitudes.

Media

Turning around the EU's poorest country. Can Portugal's new government deal with its massive debts, high unemployment rate and contracting economy?

Inside Story aired on Monday, June 6, 2011.

Portugal is a country with massive debts, an unemployment rate of 12 per cent and a contracting economy.

So for the new government, led by the victorious Social Democrats, the challenges are huge. Having formed a coaliton with the smaller conservative Popular Party, they now have to push through tough austerity measures in order to repay a huge bailout.

But can the new government turn around what is considered to be the European Union's poorest country? And will the tough spending cuts and higher taxes lead to unrest on the streets?

Inside Story discusses with guests: Antonio Costa Pinto, a professor of political science at the University of Lisbon; Joao Caiado Guerreiro, a business lawyer; and Vanessa Rossi, an economics expert at Chatham House.