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The southern European NICs
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 May 2009
Extract
To interpret the responses of Greece, Portugal, and Spain to changes in the international political economy over the past decade, I would like to borrow eclectically from the conceptual frameworks developed by both Ellen Comisso and Peter Katzenstein. From the former, I take the stress on the centrality of politics and choice and the notion that state structures create the possibility for a course of action without determining the action itself. From the latter, I retain the general proposition that during periods of hegemonic decline those possibilities for choice widen and include the option of changing state structure itself. To these I would add that the nature of options, the flexibility of response they imply, and the realm of choice itself depend heavily on the level of development of a particular state and civil society as well as on their relationship with one another. The more negative and less reinforcing the relationship, the more the respective needs of civil society and state will conflict. The greater the conflict, the more circumscribed the range of options available to political actors. In the case of the southern European newly industrializing countries (NICs), the changing articulation between civil society and the state and the external pressures influencing it inform both the evolution of domestic structures and the policy choices of elites within them.
- Type
- 4. Responding to International Economic Change outside the CMEA
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- Copyright © The IO Foundation 1986
References
1. On postwar economic change in the southern European NICs, see Williams, Allan, ed., Southern Europe Transformed: Political and Economic Change in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain (London: Harper & Row, 1984)Google Scholar, and Tsoukalis, Loukas, The European Community and Its Mediterranean Enlargement (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981)Google Scholar, which is the best source on EC relations with the southern European NICs.
2. Both quotations are from the valuable article by Tovias, Alfred, “The International Context of Democratic Transition,” in Pridham, Geoffrey, ed., The New Mediterranean Democracies: Regime Transition in Spain, Greece and Portugal (London: Frank Cass, 1984), p. 160Google Scholar.
3. On the transitions in southern Europe, in general, see Diamandouros, P. Nikiforos et al. , A Bibliographical Essay on Southern Europe and Its Recent Transition to Political Democracy (Florence: European University Institute, 1986)Google Scholar.
4. See Tsoukalis, , European Community, pp. 242–56Google Scholar.
5. See, for example, Hudson, R. and Lewis, J. R., “Capital Accumulation: The Industrialization of Southern Europe?” in Williams, , Southern Europe Transformed, pp. 179–207Google Scholar. On the informal economy see the unpublished paper by Benton, Lauren A., “The ‘Informalization’ of Spanish Industry: The Role of Unregulated Labor in Industrial Development” (Mimeo, John Hopkins University, 1986)Google Scholar.