Related Papers
Democracies in Transition. Political Change in Democratic Regimes
2017 •
luca lanzalaco
Romanian Journal of Sociology, 1-2,XII
Elite and Mass Ideologies on Romanian Transition, 2001
2001 •
Dumitru Sandu
To Outwit Modernity: Intellectuals and Politics in Transition
Johan Muller
The Transition To The Human World Of Democracy Notes for History of the Concept of Transition, from Early Marxism to 1989
Nicolas Guilhot
Whether to a 'liberal' or a 'people's' democracy, the evolution of modern political systems has been consistently theorized as a 'transition.' Elaborated within Marxism as the 'transition to communism' and later recycled by modernization theory and comparative politics, this concept has been tightly connected to the development of macro-societal analysis. This paper argues that any attempt at writing its history should be sensitive to the deep-seated ambivalence of this concept, which has alternatively lent itself to either tele-ological or non-teleological interpretations. But far from matching the ready-made division between Marxist and non-Marxist political sociology, this ambivalence has always been internal to these different social scientific traditions. As a result, the same conceptual issues and tensions can be identified within the Marxist and, later, Soviet doctrine on the one hand, and Western social sciences on the other hand, from the sociology of development of the 1950s to comparative democratization in the 1980s.
Preparing for the Revolution? The Dissident Intellectuals Before 1989
2009 •
Andras Bozoki
Presentation of the monograph:: Other transitions: forgotten alternative stories and experiences of resistance to the hegemonic narratives of the transition to democracy
Faced with the univocal nature of the hegemonic discourse on the Spanish transition, the articles in this monograph show us the rich and often contradictory complexity of this process from a critical viewpoint. The content we have included is encompassed under the label the other transitions. That is, it is intended to build a different narrative about the transition, far from (and in opposition to) the Spanish state’s dominant discourse of the past forty years, in the period from the end of the dictatorship to the victory of the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE; the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party) in the 1982 general elections. During these years and until the eruption of the 2008 crisis and its effects as a political crisis in 2012, this discourse has become part of the dominant ideology in the sense that Pierre Bourdieu describes it: as normalised concepts that have even become cognitive structures that have prevented rethinking about any possible deficiencies, errors, r...
Grani
Theoretical Framework of Democratic Transition: Mechanisms of Democratization
Mustafa Harb
Democratic transition from authoritarian rule has been an important focus of scholarly interest since 1970s. The democratic transition literature presented many concepts, theoretical arguments, methodological and analytical approaches to tackle with this phenomenon. This huge academic accumulation came in conjunction with what was called the third wave of democratization which started in the mid-seventies beginning from southern Europe, and extended during the decades of the eighties and nineties to include many countries around the globe. Democratic transition can be defined as a political process of establishing or enlarging the possibility of democratic participation and liberalization. This process reflects the redistribution of power between the state and the civil society. It is accompanied by the appearance of different centers of power and the introduction of the political debate. The article concentrates on the mechanisms which lead to the consensus between political actors...
Praktyka Teoretyczna 3 (13)
“Did Somebody Say ‘Transition’?” A Critical Intervention into the Use of a Notion
2014 •
Gordan Maslov
From the time of its introduction, the concept of 'transition' has effected a tectonic shift in our understanding of post-socialism. In the process which has taken place during the last couple of decades after the collapse of East European socialist regimes, it has become transformed from one of the signifiers of the political and social change which occurred into a cornerstone for thinking, analyzing and predicting the future of post-socialism. Furthermore, in this article it is posited that all the political and social processes occurring in the ex-socialist countries are defined in relation to transition as an all-encompassing form of post-socialist experience. Relying on the discursive theory of Ernesto Laclau, this article attempts to consider together the usually separated questions of epistemology and ontology, and to ask what is the connection between scientific origins of the concept of transition and its political legitimacy. We claim that transition is a “sutured“ structure composed of various social experiences and political strategies, which naturalizes and universalizes the contingent power struggles that are taking place and will take place in the future of post-socialist countries. Therefore, severing the existing bonds between transition and the actually existing post-socialism is a necessary precondition for creating a more complex and productive understanding of the societies of East and South East Europe.
Political Reflection Magazine
The Twilight Zone of Political Transition: Between Revolution and Democratic Change
2019 •
Marco Marsili
O´Donnell, Schmitter and Whitehead define transition broadly as "the interval between one political regime and another". Plattner concludes that "they emphasize a particular path to democratic transition – one that is neither violent nor revolutionary, but proceeds from negotiation between an outgoing authoritarian regime and its democratic opposition and often relies upon formal pacts that provide security guarantees to both sides". I wonder whether there is a common and clear pattern to democratic transition, or if rather exists a "twilight zone" in which violence is still permitted as the "vestige" of the vanishing authoritarian regime. In this brief article, I explore the connections between revolution and democracy in political changes.
An Analysis of the Transition Movement from the Political Perspective
Damla Umut Uzun
The core point of this study is to analyze the transition movement by focusing on its ingredients, strategy, and principles. By doing this, many other topics will be questioned such as: What are the priorities of people working for transition network? What are the motives of the lack of transition initiatives or of the failure of creating any transition initiative around the Middle East and Africa? Does transition movement or the activities of transition initiatives have political ingredients? If ‘yes’, how and why? In order to answer those questions, some successful transition cases around the world will be analyzed, and some alternative ways or moderations for the existing transition model will be discussed in the framework of the question ‘whether transition movement is political or not’.
