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Rethinking Southern Europe: Society, Networks and Politics

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António Costa Pinto, ed., A Sombra das Ditaduras. A Europa do Sul em Comparação (Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2013), 244pp., ISBN: 978-972-671-316-6.
Maria Elena Cavallaro and Kostis Kornetis, eds., Rethinking Democratisation in Spain, Greece and Portugal (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 266pp., £52.92, ISBN: 978-3-030-11107-6.
Guya Accornero, The Revolution before the Revolution: Late Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 186pp., £82.49, ISBN: 978-1-78533-114-5.

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Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 February 2021

Alan Granadino ,
Eirini Karamouzi  and
Rinna Kullaa
Alan Granadino*
Affiliation:
Kanslerinrinne 1 Pinni B, P.O. Box 300, 33014 Tampere University, Finland
Eirini Karamouzi*
Affiliation:
Kanslerinrinne 1 Pinni B, P.O. Box 300, 33014 Tampere University, Finland
Rinna Kullaa*
Affiliation:
Kanslerinrinne 1 Pinni B, P.O. Box 300, 33014 Tampere University, Finland
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
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Extract

Writing and researching Southern Europe as a symbiotic area has always presented a challenging task. Historians and political scientists such as Stanley Payne, Edward Malefakis, Giulio Sapelli, and Roberto Aliboni have studied the concept of Southern Europe and its difficult paths to modernity. They have been joined by sociologists and anthropologists who have debated the existence of a Southern European paradigm in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the arduous transformation of the region's welfare systems, economic development, education and family structures. These scholarly attempts to understand the specificities of Southern Europe date back to the concerns of Western European Cold War strategists in the 1970s, many of whom were worried about the status quo of the region in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorships. But this geographical and geopolitical definition of the area did not necessarily follow existing cultural, political and economic patterns. Once the Eurozone crisis hit in the 2000s these questions came back with renewed force but with even less conceptual clarity, as journalists and pundits frequently gestured towards vague notions of what they considered to be ‘Southern Europe’.

Type
Review Article
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , August 2021 , pp. 439 - 448
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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8 Kostis Kornetis, Eirini Kotsovili and Nikolaos Papadogiannis, eds., Consumption and Gender in Southern Europe since the Long 1960s (London: Bloomsbury, 2016); António Costa Pinto and Nuno Severiano Texeira, eds., Southern Europe and the Making of the European Union (New York: 2003); Alessandra Venturini, Postwar Migration in Southern Europe, 1950–2000: An Economic Analysis (Cambridge: 2004); Lauren M. McLaren, Constructing Democracy in Southern Europe: A Comparative Analysis of Italy, Spain and Turkey (London: 2008); Migani and Varsori, eds., Europe in the International Arena During the 1970s; Elena Calandri, Daniele Caviglia, Antonio Varsori, Détente in Cold War Europe: Politics and Diplomacy in the Mediterranean and the Middle East (London: 2014); António Costa Pinto and Federico Finchelstein, Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Europe and Latin America: Crossing Borders (London: 2018); Durán Muñoz, R. Contención y Transgresión. Las movilizaciones sociales y el Estado en las transiciones Española y portuguesa (Madrid: 2000); P. Ramos Pinto, Lisbon Rising: Urban Social Movements in the Portuguese Revolution, 1974–75 (Manchester and New York: 2013); Palacios Cerezales, O Poder Cai una Rua. Crise de Estado e Acções Colectivas na Revolução Portuguesa, 1974–1975 (Lisbon: 2003).

9 Pamela Beth Radcliff, Making Democratic Citizens in Spain: Civil Society and the Popular Origins of the Transition, 1960–1978 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Mary Vincent, Spain, 1833–2002 (Oxford: 2007).

10 Similarly, on the EU, Patel, Kiran Klaus, ‘Provincializing European Union: Co-operation and Integration in Europe in a Historical Perspective’, Contemporary European History, 22, 4 (2013), 649–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 A four-year research project Nonhegfp sponsored by the Academy of Finland on the non-Hegemonic foreign policy transformation of Spain, Portugal, Greece, Austria, Sweden and Finland is ongoing from 2019 to 2023 led by Rinna Kullaa at Tampere University. ‘Foreign Policy in Alliance or in Non-Alignment? History of the Post-War World Order Through the Eyes of European Non-Hegemonic Powers’ seeks to discover such a history of the area and its linkages. The three authors of this article work on the project which is the impetus for interest in looking at the region here once more.

12 Connelly, Matthew, ‘Taking off the Cold War Lens: Visions of North-South Conflict during the Algerian War of Independence’, The American Historical Review, 105, 3 (2000), 739–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Some of the chapters that form this edited collection are translations from António Costa Pinto and Leonardo Morlino, Dealing with the Legacy of Authoritarianism: The ‘Politics of the Past’ in Southern European Democracies (Abingdon and New York: 2011).

14 Barahona de Brito, A., C. González-Enríquez and Paloma Aguilar, eds., The Politics of Memory: Transitional Justice in Democratizing Societies (Oxford: 2001); Aguilar, Paloma, ‘Transitional or Post-Transitional Justice? Recent Developments in the Spanish Case’, South European Society and Politics, 13, 4 (2008), 417–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Korvas, Iosif, ‘Explaining Prolonged Silences in Transitional Justice: The Disappeared in Cyprus and Spain’, Comparative Political Studies, 46, 6 (2013), 730–56Google Scholar.

15 Richard Gunther, Nikiforos Diamandouros and Dimitris Sotiropoulos, eds., Democracy and the State in the New Southern Europe (Oxford: 2006); Christopher Hill, The Role of Elites in the Spanish Transition to Democracy (1975–1981): Motors of Change (New York: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2007); Frances Lannon and Paul Preston, eds., Élites and Power in Twentieth-Century Spain (New York: Clarendon Press-Oxford, 1990).

16 Samuel P. Huntington, The Third Wave: Democratization in the Late Twentieth Century (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).

17 António Costa Pinto, ed., A Sombra das Ditaduras. A Europa do Sul em Comparação (Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2013), 28.

18 Evanthis Hatzivassiliou, ‘The Ghost of Trials Past: Transitional Justice in Greece, 1974–5’, Contemporary European History (forthcoming); Nikos Alivizatos and Nikiforos Diamandouros, ‘Politics and the Judiciary in the Greek Transition to Democracy’, in James McAdams ed., Transitional Justice and the Rule of Law in New Democracies (Notre Dame: 1997), 27–60.

19 António Costa Pinto and Francisco Carlos Palomanes Martins, eds., O passado que não passa. A sombra das ditaduras na Europa do Sul e na América Latina (Rio de Janeiro: 2013).

20 António Costa Pinto, ed., 223.

21 Maria Elena Cavallaro and Kostis Kornetis, eds., Rethinking Democratisation in Spain, Greece and Portugal (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 26.

22 Maria Elena Cavallaro and Kostis Kornetis, eds., 22.

23 Martin Klimke, ‘1968: Europe in Technicolour’, in Dan Stone ed., The Oxford Handbook of Postwar Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Robert Gildea, James Mark and Anette Warring, eds., Europe's 1968: Voices of Revolt (Oxford University Press: 2013).

24 Guya Accornero, The Revolution before the Revolution: Late Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2016), 11.

25 Marwick, Arthur, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy and the United Kingdom, 1958–1974 (London: Bloomsbury, 2011)Google Scholar.

26 Nikolaos Papadogiannis, Militant Around the Clock? Left-Wing Youth Politics, Leisure, and Sexuality in Post-Dictatorship Greece 1974–1981 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2015), 5.

27 Ibid., 8.

28 Although following a slightly different chronology, the same can be said for Spain: Wilhelmi, Gonzalo, Romper el consenso. La izquierda radical en la Transición Española (1975–1982) (Madrid: 2016)Google Scholar.

29 Horn, Gerd-Rainer, The Spirit of ’68: Rebellion in Western Europe and North America, 1956–1976 (Oxford University Press, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 Papadogiannis, 43.

31 Ibid., 276.

32 A research project currently using innovative theoretical and spatial approaches to study the Mediterranean region is ‘Russia and the Great Powers in the Mediterranean’ (RUSMED), led by Rinna Kullaa.

33 Albanese, Matteo and Hierro, Pablo Del, Transnational Fascism in the Twentieth Century: Spain, Italy and the Global Neo-Fascist Network (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 113Google Scholar.

34 Notable exceptions that show the relevance of including this dimension are, for example, Baby, Sophie, Le mythe de la transition pacifique. Violence et politique en Espagne (1975–1982) (Madrid: 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sophie Baby, Olivier Compagnon and Eduardo Calleja, eds., Violencia y transiciones políticas a finales del siglo XX. Europa del sur – América Latina (Madrid: 2009).

35 Also see Emmanuel Comte, The History of the European Migration Regime: Germany's Strategic Hegemony (Oxford and New York: 2018).

36 The volume presents the numbers of the irregular migrants intercepted by the national gendarmerie at the Franco–Italian border 1983–5 (64); the number of asylum seekers in the main countries of the European Community 1980–6 (83), in 1987–9 (128) and in 1990–2 (168); the numbers of irregular migrants turned away at the French borders 1993–4 (219); the growth in legal Italian residents 2002–16 (258) and tells readers from which EU countries registered residents in proportion came to Italy from.

37 Paoli, Simone, Frontiera Sud: L'Italia e la nascita dell'Europa di Schengen (Rome: Le Monnier, 2018), 141Google Scholar.

38 Simone Paoli, 141.