Revolutionizing Transitions: 50 Years since the Democratization of Portugal and Greece

The year 1974 was a pivotal moment in the history of democratization, with the end of authoritarian regimes in Portugal and Greece and the beginning of the transition in Spain following in 1975.

Portugal's democratization started with a peaceful coup-d’etat on April 25, immediately followed by an intense period of social mobilization remembered as Processo Revolucionário em Curso (PREC, Revolutionary Process Underway). The country went through a phase of deep political ‘experimentation’ and ‘innovation,’ which involved several sectors of society and included the occupation of lands, factories, and media; the nationalization of banks and enterprises; the development of innovative participatory processes in spheres such as urban planning and architecture, or education and arts.

These experiences were sustained by a more protracted process of construction of democratic practices taking place during the last years of the regime, which was characterized by an increasing mobilization of Portuguese society and the pluralization of the the domestic opposition. Students, as well as youth in general, were at the forefront of this process of democratic learning, which – after the coup-d’état – converged with the emerging large movements contributing to boosting them.

Students and the youth were also crucial in Greece, where the students proved instrumental in discrediting the regime’s attempt to liberalize from within. The Polytechnic revolt in November 1973 might not have achieved the overthrow of the Colonels’ dictatorship, which was succeeded by an even more hard-line, albeit short-lived Junta. Still, it prevented a ‘continuity within change’ scenario for the Greek regime. The cultural and political resistances of that time informed much of the transitional dynamics of 1974, leading to the gradual consolidation of democracy after the regime’s final downfall in July of the same year. While the transition in Greece was due to a regime collapse triggered by the dramatic events in Cyprus that led to the Turkish invasion and the eventuality of armed conflict between the two countries over the island, a parallel transition ‘from below’ was receiving a significant push from the pedigree of the resistance years.

This panel discussion takes the opportunity of the 50th anniversary of these events to re-visit the panelist’s respective books on these historical events, focusing on the final phase of the dictatorships in Portugal and Greece, as well as the initial period of the transition from dictatorship to democracy, from the perspective of the student political, social and cultural resistance.

The panel discussed issues such as the processes of failed liberalization of the dictatorships, the importance of cultural and political resistances, and democratization, introducing a comparison between the two cases which marked the beginning of what Samuel Huntington famously called “third wave of democratization.”

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Guya Accornero, a political sociologist based in Lisbon, has worked on topics such as contentious governance, the emotional and cognitive dimensions of revolutionary processes, and latency and visibility in mobilization (particularly in the context of austerity and gentrification in Southern Europe). Her publications include the monography The Revolution before the Revolution: Late Authoritarianism and Student Protest in Portugal, the edited book Social Movement Studies in Europe: The State of the Art (co-edited with Olivier Fillieule).

Kostis Kornetis is an Assistant Professor of Contemporary History at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain. He received his Ph.D in History and Civilization from the European University Institute, Florence. His research focuses on the history and memory of the 1960s, the methodology of oral history, and the use of film as a source for social and cultural history. He is the co-editor of Rethinking Democratization in Spain, Greece and Portugal (2019). His book Children of the Dictatorship: Student Resistance, Cultural Politics and the ‘Long 1960s’ in Greece (2013) was awarded the Edmund Keeley Book Award.

Nikolaos Papadogiannis (he/him) is a Lecturer in European History and a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the University of Stirling. His current research includes two projects: the links between migration from Greece to West Germany and sexual transformations in both countries in the 1960s-1970s; and the impact of Global South HIV campaigns on relevant collective action in Western Europe since the 1980s. His monograph entitled Militant around the Clock? Left-wing Youth Politics, Leisure and Sexuality in post-dictatorship Greece, 1974-1981 was published in 2015 by Berghahn Books. He is currently co-guest-editing a special issue on transnational histories of HIV activism for the Journal of the History of Sexuality, and is one of the editors of Contemporary European History.

MODERATOR

Pamela B. Radcliff is a Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. She received her Ph.D. degree in History from Columbia University. Her research focuses on mass politics, gender, civil society, and democratic transitions. Her publications include From Mobilization to Civil War: The Politics of Polarization in the Spanish City of Gijón (1996), Making Democratic Citizens in Spain: Civil Society and the Popular Origins of the Transition, 1960-1978 (2011) and History of Modern Spain, 1808-Present (2017). She is also the co-author of Constructing Spanish Womanhood: Female Identity in Modern Spain (1999).