Dealing with the Legacy of Authoritarianism: The “Politics of the Past” in Southern European Democracies(South European Society and Politics)

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.

This book was published as a special issue of South European Society and Politics.

1. Introduction: The Authoritarian Past and South European Democracies: An Introduction António Costa Pinto 2. Transitional Justice and Memory: Exploring Perspectives Alexandra Barahona de Brito 3. Authoritarian Past and Democracy in Italy Marco Tarchi 4. Coping with the Double Legacy of Authoritarianism and Revolution in Portuguese Democracy António Costa Pinto 5. Party Attitudes towards the Authoritarian Past in Spanish Democracy Carsten Humlebaek 6. Repressive Legacies and the Democratisation of Iberian Police Systems Diego Palacios Cerezales 7. The Authoritarian Past and Contemporary Greek Democracy Dimitris A. Sotiropoulos 8. Defending the Nation? Maintaining Turkey’s Narrative of the Armenian Genocide Jennifer M. Dixon 9. The Politics of the Past: The Southern Cone and Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective Alexandra Barahona de Brito and Mario Szajder 10. Authoritarian Legacies, Politics of the Past and the Quality of Democracy in Southern Europe: Open Conclusions Leonardo Morlino

'This is an especially valuable contribution to our thinking on how elites and institutions reflect, reconstruct and reconcile authoritarian pasts in new democracies. From its introduction to its conclusion, the collection teaches us important lessons that extend beyond southern Europe and even beyond comparative politics.'

- Nancy Bermeo, Nuffield Professor of Comparative Politics, Nuffield College, University of Oxford