Transitology (Political Science)

The purpose of this article is to analyse, through an historical and comparative politics perspective, the course of political transitions, the democratization processes, the institutional performance and the quality of democracy in Africa, with a particular focus on the Portuguese-speaking African countries. Three decades passed after the national independencies, and framed in a comparative proposition seeking to enhance the theoretical, empirical and methodological debates about the processes of political democratization in the contemporary world, we intend to draw the contours, the modalities and the development of the mechanisms of political liberalisation in Africa. We also seek to identify the elements that influence democratic performance in these contexts having as reference (i) institutional matters, related to the system of government and to the model of democracy, as well as issues pertaining to an (ii) economic, (iii) historical and (iv) socio-cultural order.

Politikwissenschaftliche Transformationstheorien befassen sich mit Transformationen im Rahmen der bestehenden staatlichen Ordnung. Die Transitionsforschung der 1980er und 1990er Jahre (z.B. Linz/Stepan 1996, Merkel 1999, O‘Donnell/Schmitter 1986) suchte nach Regelmäßigkeiten im Übergang von Autokratien zu Demokratien zunächst in Südeuropa und Lateinamerika, später in Afrika und Osteuropa. So entstanden nicht gering zu schätzende Erkenntnisse über die Ursachen, den Verlauf und die Erfolgsaussichten eines Regimewechsels, die sich jedoch auf den Wandel von einem politischen System zu einem anderen beschränkten. Es gibt jedoch keinen theoretisch und logisch überzeugenden Grund, warum sich die Transformation politischer Ordnung nur innerhalb einer bestimmten Ebene untersuchen lässt. Versteht man Transformation in einem weiten Sinne als „Wandel“, wird deutlich, dass dies auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen stattfinden kann bzw. dass sich Wandlungsprozesse auch über mehrere Ebenen erstrecken können. Transformationen laufen nicht nur auf der Regimeebene ab, sondern auch auf der Ebene der Regierung und auf der Ebene der politischen Gemeinschaft.

"By the end of 1970s, transitology, or the study of the transformations following the breakdown of dictatorial regimes, became a sub-discipline of political science. Various theoretical perspectives oriented the analysis toward different factors that could decisively influence political change and transition: the economic and cultural prerequisites, the weight of the recent past, the extrication-path from dictatorship or the international setting. This article examines critically the main currents of transitology in order to re-evaluate their heuristic capacity, their interpretative limits and their methodological difficulties. It stands for rethinking the paradigms of political transition, towards a multidimensional model of analysis of political change, more sensitive to the local specificities and to the dynamic of transformations on the long term.
Keywords: transitology, political transition, political transformation, postdictatorial regimes, democratization"

"Spain's successful transition to democracy (1975-1982) was influenced profoundly by a long-standing 19th-century federalist tradition.1 Although, as elsewhere, early federalism was understood mostly in territorial terms, in Spain it gradually took on ethnic connotations. By denouncing the monolithic, pre-democratic nation-state, the federalist vision emphasized different cultures and languages. Thus Spain was seen as an ethnically pluralistic country. A homogeneous Spain would have been inconsistent with a pluralistic concept of “Spanishness.”

Two visions of Spain, the centralist and the federalist-regionalist, have competed since the beginning of the 19th century, as part of a long-standing political conflict…"

Nationalist movements have played a key role in Spain's democratic transition, contributing decisively to frame the Spanish state in its present shape. This article will focus on the role of Constitution-making in providing the legitimacy needed in democratic transitions affected by the rise of sharp ethno-national conflicts. Among the contributing factors to the Transition's success the following are stressed: the Monarchy as a cohesive unitary symbol; the neutralisation of the Army's influence in political life; and a pragmatic, civic, a-nationalist leadership in Madrid.

How does a political regime evolve? How (and when) does an old regime turn itself into a new one? When does a political change occur? What is the first thing to change in a political transformation and what is the degree and the speed of this change? What are the causes of this transformation? And when exactly does this change end? When the new regime is completely established? What concepts can we use to understand each moment of the political transition? How can we think about the whole process? In 2005, Brazil completes twenty continuous years of civil government, a striking exception in the country’s history, all of then, except one, chosen by direct elections. The long transition from the dictatorial regime to a non-dictatorial one (not necessarily democratic) begin in 1974. Fifteen years after, in 1989, a new stage in this process begins, overcoming the instability of the national political scene. From this moment on, the consolidation of democracy becomes the central problem of the national political agenda. There are many ways of telling and explaining this history. This book presents a survey of the different interpretations of this important period of Brazilian history and, at the same time, outlines some criticisms on the mainstream interpretations in Brazilian Political Science.

Most scholars working on the Arab World typically view the state’s power as something congruent with its cartographic boundaries. Power emerges from an institutional core—the regime—which exerts its hegemony over subordinated institutions, spaces and scales. Thus, the regime presents itself as the privileged site of political formation, intervention and inquiry. The result is a body of scholarship that has largely neglected the dynamics of ‘new state space’ formation at the urban scale. Drawing on the case of the Bouregreg project, a massive high-end urban development scheme positioned between the twin cities of Rabat and Salé, Morocco, this paper investigates the dynamics of agency formation implicated in the creation of a new state space and considers what it reveals about state respatialisation and the rise of new governmental arrangements that have been elided by mainstream accounts on the Middle East and North African region.

In this article we argue that Morocco has experienced fundamental political change over the past decades. This transition however cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narratives linking economic liberalisation to democratisation. Rather, transition reflects a shift towards authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government. We focus on how political power has been reconfigured into new forms of ‘hybrid’ government where ‘state’, ‘market’ and ‘civil society’ interact in novel ways, by discussing the political dynamics of high-end urban development and the rationales underpinning social development policies to explain how ‘poor people’ are integrated into the realm of the market.