Democracy in Southern Europe

Colonialism, International Relations and Europeanization from Malta to Cyprus

Isabelle Calleja Ragonesi

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780755627141
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786725592
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

How have Malta and Cyprus - both EU members – transitioned from colonial island states to independent democracies? With the assistance of primary documentation this book traces the difficult path of these two states to becoming independent liberal democracies by using the pathway of democratization through decolonization. Using socio-economic and political data, analysed through the microscope of political science and international relations theories, Isabelle Calleja Ragonesi charts the progress of the two islands in the context of a number of four distinct phases. Firstly decolonization, independence and achieving the status of procedural democracies; secondly post-colonial independence consolidating democracy and regime breakdown; thirdly sovereign nation-state status and second attempts at consolidating democracy and finally attempting to reach substantive democracy status and EU membership. The study of these two states is contextualized within the context of democratization in Southern Europe and the cases of Malta and Cyprus provide new insights on the region for scholars of political science and international institutions.

Chapter 1

DEMOCRATIZATION IN SOUTHERN EUROPE AS SHOWN IN THE POLITICAL LITERATURE OF THE REGION

The idea of some objective reality, existing as it is, independent of any subjective perception of it, apparently makes sense . . . [however] . . . Perhaps our human situation is such that we cannot know anything beyond our experiences; perhaps we are, each one of us individually, confined to the theatre of our own minds. Nonetheless, we can conceive what it means to assert an objective reality beyond the stream of our experiences.¹

Introduction

This chapter deals with the literature on democratization in Southern Europe. Its aim is to identify the approach taken in explaining democratic transition in the region. The literature, viewed chronologically, shows the changing perspective towards the process. This objective is facilitated by the abundant empirical and theoretical data available,² though it is far less abundant in the case of Malta and Cyprus.³ In line with the early work on the region, the first section draws on the functionalist approach, and outlines the macro climate, and the similarities of the socio-economic and historical fabric of the Southern European region. Next the work homes in on the later literature, and in line with their focus, incorporates the micro climate and, drawing on the elite approach, concentrates on the different roles of key domestic players in the region. The chapter then shifts to the role of external players in democratization, drawing on a body of literature that became increasingly abundant from the late 1980s. The chapter concludes by focusing on a relatively new school that argues that both internal and external factors played an important role in transition in the area, and that in today’s interdependent and global climate one cannot easily distinguish between the two.

A focus on the domestic scene: The functionalist approach

Southern Europe: A region apart

Most of the literature on Southern Europe focuses on the domestic scene and the internal dynamics of the region. The early literature drawing on the functionalist approach was fairly unanimous in arguing that sustainable democratization in Southern Europe occurred late. Though the region was credited with possessing many of the requirements needed for it to fit the democratic mould,⁴ it was seen until recently⁵ as peripheral, backward and feudal, with a stagnant economy and a corrupt and paternalistic political system.⁶ The general view was that this was a consequence of the late industrialization of the region, and in the case of Cyprus and Malta of never fully participating in industrialization at all. Late industrialization meant an undeveloped proletariat and a weak politicized middle class. Essential changes in class relations, distribution of resources and economic diversity, prerequisites of modernization, occurred only in the mid-twentieth century. Consequently, the political conflict, and the resultant political liberalization that took place in Western Europe in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did not take place here until much later in the twentieth century.⁷

This did not preclude rapid change and growth. However, change was from an agrarian to a services economy, heavily dependent on emigrant remittances and tourism. The region never fully experienced the intermediary industrial phase found in Western Europe.⁸ The politicization of labour within the context of industrial democracy therefore occurred late, in the context of small- and medium-sized firms as opposed to the large- and medium-sized industries of continental Europe, and over a few generations, unlike Northern Europe where the process evolved over centuries. The consumerization and modernization of society was a process where modernization preserved and gave new life to traditional structures. Thus the general consensus was of modernization without development as the model which characterized Southern Europe.⁹

A model of retarded development

This model was characterized by social relations that never fully undertook the changeover from systems of power and cultural values based on status to those based on contracts, unlike societies where the market economy had prevailed. Instead we get the ruralization of the city, and late urbanization.¹⁰ This led to the transformation of economic and institutional structures in Southern Europe, without the corresponding cultural changes. Late, and only partial, industrialization created an unhealthy and over-intimate relationship between the political and economic domain in Southern Europe, resulting in insufficient penetration of market mechanisms here. Consequently the state took over and had a decisive impact on the economic, social and political life of these countries.¹¹

Southern European politics was therefore characterized by individual and vertical relationships rather than collective and horizontal ones.¹² This relationship was reinforced by the synchronization of democratic and welfare government in Southern Europe.¹³ This lack of synchrony between social and productive structures, and the lack of a strong state technocracy, was said to account for the clientelistic character of the Southern European welfare system:¹⁴ a system that pandered to individual needs, rather than providing universal well-being, thus dividing society into groups, instead of unifying it through mechanisms of solidarity. The result was the growth of societies similar to those of industrialized countries but linked to reproductive structures¹⁵ typical of latecomers to industrialization. Consequently, Southern Europe featured clientelism and patronage, characterized by the presence of status rather than contractual systems.¹⁶

These characteristics explained late democratization in the region and the fragile forms polyarchy took here. Democratization in Spain, Greece and Portugal in the 1970s was regarded with some scepticism. Democratic government in Italy, Malta and Cyprus was seen as uncertain and unstable.¹⁷ Military right-wing elements in Spain,¹⁸ continued reserved powers in the Portuguese constitution¹⁹ and the weakness of the Greek state made their continuation as democracies uncertain. There were few expectations of the region catching up with the progressive and democratic culture of the European Community (EC).²⁰

Southern Europe returns to the fold: The successful transition

In the mid-1970s, however, Spain, Portugal and Greece made successful transitions to democracy. Italy underwent a second transition that promoted democratic consolidation.²¹ Malta and Cyprus were also sustaining fledgling democracies. By the 1980s, democratization here was more successful than in South America, or in Eastern Europe, the other third-wave²² attempts.²³ Here democratic government remained fragile and unconsolidated.²⁴ In Southern Europe democracy was consolidated²⁵ even in Cyprus, though partition continues to act against the spirit of democracy.²⁶

Material drawing on the functionalist approach abandoned the image of the region as the poor, discarded and discredited periphery of Europe.²⁷ Southern Europe was now viewed as economically successful, socially advanced and accruing the habits of a democratized culture.²⁸ This shift allowed Southern Europe to throw off its peripheral status²⁹ and integrate successfully with the continent. Spain, Portugal and Greece became members of the EC in the 1980s and more recently of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Cyprus and Malta are among the most prepared and advanced new members of the 2004 enlargement, with among the highest gross domestic products (GDPs) from the new member states.³⁰

Academics attempted to explain this phenomenon. New material focused on the region’s early exposure to democratic practices³¹ and saw it as the forerunner of many of the liberal and democratic structures that characterized Europe.³² Southern Europe, it was now argued, adopted liberal and democratic patterns of government early³³ and had long possessed the characteristics needed to support a sophisticated and differentiated democratic society.³⁴ These included an economy with a wide dispersion of resources and a long practice of trade³⁵ that fostered a powerful trading bourgeois, who provided an alternative to the power of the establishment. Academics stressed that the criteria, social, political and economic, that Dahl specified as necessary for a democracy were present in the region early:³⁶ independent city traditions, diverse associational groups, multi-tiered class structures. Also present were numerous religious bodies and differentiated Church structures. Southern Europe was also ethnically diverse, with a linguistic mix that encouraged a multicultural society. Land holdings were also dispersed, and this allowed the presence of alternative power blocs to the state: the landed aristocracy and the Church.³⁷

The comparative approach and the importance of chronology

Faced with the only contemporary example of a successful democratization of a whole region,³⁸ attempts to understand the process escalated.³⁹ Models were updated to factor in the Southern European third-wave transitions. Huntington in 1991 spoke of three waves of democratization.⁴⁰ The first-wave democratization was viewed as largely home grown,⁴¹ forged through evolution, in a climate of expanding suffrage, economic growth (though this altered by the end of the century) and welfare reform. The second wave after the First World War was seen as democratizing as a result of foreign impetus, and though domestic arrangements furthered democratization, the coordinators in nearly every case were external players.⁴²

Third-wave democracies were seen to share characteristics in common with both first- and second-wave transitions.⁴³ Democratization in Southern Europe was portrayed as a fairly long-drawn-out affair resembling first-wave cases.⁴⁴ On the other hand many Eastern European states adopted democratic institutions overnight, compressing into a matter of weeks and months a process that elsewhere had taken over two centuries to reach fruition.⁴⁵ Also in common with the first wave, Southern European democratization was seen to have been a result of largely domestic conditions and change, and negotiated by the domestic elites.⁴⁶ In many South American and Eastern European states, however, international factors were seen to have played the determining role in the collapse of their authoritarian and totalitarian governments and in the introduction of liberal democracy.⁴⁷

The influence of the developmental and modernization schools

The literature of the early third wave was also influenced by the approach taken in the work of the first and second wave that placed democratization within the construct of developmental and modernization theories.⁴⁸ These schools posited that states moved forward by adopting notions of progress and the institutions, mechanisms, methods and doctrines of the Anglo-American world.⁴⁹ The modernization school also stressed the need for certain socio-economic targets to be reached in living standards, GDP and literacy rates before democratic government would take root. These models posited that transitional societies moved towards modernity cum democracy. Their immediate points of reference were Lipset’s hypothesis: that the more well-to-do a nation, the greater the chances that it will sustain democracy; Dahl’s hypothesis: that democratization will take place only under conditions in which power resources have become widely distributed; and Lerner’s hypothesis: that urbanization starts modernization and is followed by increased literacy, media exposure and economic and political participation followed by democratic governance.⁵⁰

The early material influenced by these theories highlighted the importance of socio-economic, historical and cultural variables as positive indices to democratization. Successful democratization was a result of socio-economic and political change facilitated by the area’s proximity to Western Europe, its shared history, similar political and civic arrangements and value systems.⁵¹ This literature showed that democratic transition in Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy in the 1970s had been a long-drawn-out affair and a result of a combination of factors including industrialization, the politicization of class, the maintenance of a healthy civic culture and the existence of some pseudo-democratic institutions.⁵² Democratic governance in Malta and Cyprus wa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• About the author
• About the book
• Title Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Democratization in southern europe as shown in the political literature of the region
• Chapter 2: Democratization in southern europe – an external model of transition: Colonial versus authoritarian trends
• Chapter 3: Malta and cyprus: The case of guided democracies – democratic transition from colonial rule
• Chapter 4: Newly independent states – cyprus and malta: Consolidating democracy and its subsequent breakdown
• Chapter 5: Malta and cyprus: consolidating the nation state – negotiating a compromise: the second transition
• Chapter 6: Consolidating democracy under a federal model: Malta, cyprus and the EU
• Conclusion: From democratic consolidation to europeanization
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright Page