3
Although rather similar in numerous respects, Portugal and Spain nonetheless manifest
several fundamental political, social and economic contrasts, thus contributing to the
extraordinary puzzle, or series of puzzles, requiring analysis and explanation by social scientists.
In the 1970s these Iberian neighbors, home at that time to Western Europe’s two longest
surviving authoritarian regimes, provided the initial spark, or if one prefers the “epicenter”
4
, for
the worldwide move to democracy that has come to be known as the “Third Wave”. Although
their two paths to democracy represent near polar opposites in the worldwide range of
democratizing scenarios spanning a quarter century replete with regime transitions,
(notwithstanding some dissenting voices) even the very best political analysts have tended to
argue that different paths lead to essentially the same outcome, a position elegantly formulated by
Philippe Schmitter as the principle of equifinality in transitions to democracy. There is, no
doubt, a sense in which the consolidated democracies of Spain and Portugal appear essentially
quite similar when viewed alongside the enormous array of regime types populating the twentieth
century, yet just as political economists increasingly focus on varieties of capitalism, so too is it
appropriate in the contemporary world for comparative macropolitical analysts to pursue
conceptualizations and explanations of the differences among democracies.
4
In an earlier paper, “Rethinking Iberian Democracy Twenty-Five Years after the
Transitions,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Boston MA, August 2002, I characterized Iberia as the “unmistakable epicenter of the great
democratic quarter century.”. This paper offers a further development of the argument I initially
presented in that earlier essay.
Convention