This project examines how coalitions and their trajectories help to explain the variations in regime changes and the variations in the Portuguese and Spanish democratic outcome, during the period 1974-1978. After 48 years of dictatorship, Portugal’s political regime entered a new phase with the coup d’état of April 1974. At more or less the same time, Spain was going through political transformations of a comparable nature. If we think about the Spanish case, which has served as a prototype for democratization studies, the contrast with Portugal is impressive. The Portuguese case involved more than a linear transition to democracy: a socialist revolutionary process ended in a democratic outcome. The trajectories are the main concern: How is it that two countries that left an authoritarian regime and attained democratic stability did so via such different processes? Following the comparative-historical analysis path and the contentious politics framework, I will proceed with a study on coalitions in episodes of contention. I will show that the concatenation of certain causal mechanisms produced different coalition types. Event Analysis is employed to examine processes and mechanisms. First, I address what causal mechanisms propelled coalitions. Second, I focus on the role of coalitions in the processes of regime change. I argue that the causal mechanisms outbidding, diffusion, brokerage, boundary activation, boundary de-activation, defection, and threat generated effects that rearranged the initial configurations of institutions and political actors leading to a democratic outcome.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:625888 |
| Date | January 2012 |
| Creators | Veiga, I. |
| Publisher | University College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1355961/ |
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