Laura Desfor Edles

Rethinking democratic transition: A culturalist critique and the Spanish case

In the last few years, we have seen unprecedented shifts in the democratic world. The Soviet Union has ceased to exist, Germany has been reunited, and so many Eastern and Central European countries are now in transition that to call attention to this reality almost sounds trivial.1 As these countries struggle with transition and as struggles in some cases turn into outright civil war it becomes increasingly clear that the transformation from authoritarianism to democracy is no easy task. Recent cases of stalled and failed transitions abound. In the Phil-

A Culturalist Approach to Ethnic Nationalist Movements: Symbolization and Basque and Catalan Nationalism in Spain

The Spanish transition to democracy after the death of General Francisco Franco in 1975 is heralded as the “very model” of successful transition from authoritarianism to democracy (Gunther 1992), the epitome of “transition through transaction” (Share 1986, 1987). Spain is proclaimed “the country to be studied” (Przeworski 1986: 61) for good cause. Despite a long history of political turmoil, a notoriously brutal civil war, and nearly 40 years of dictatorship, Spain transformed itself into a democracy “from the inside out” using a remarkably quiescent process of reform called, significantly, the “strategy of consensus” (Carr and Fusi 1979; Payne 1985).

Contemporary Progressive Christianity and Its Symbolic Ramifications

In the last decade, progressive Christians have been mounting an increasingly perceptible challenge to the ‘Christian right’ in the United States. New organizations and websites are cropping up, a wellspring of books are being published, and long-standing progressive writers and theologians are garnering more attention and support than ever before. Despite significant advances, however, the impact of the ‘religious left’ in the American public sphere is still limited. In this paper, I ask why. Based on participant observation, discourse analysis, and in-depth interviews, and using a multidimensional culturalist perspective rooted in Durkheimian and Weberian ideas, I explore the symbolic dynamics of the Christian ‘left’. I argue that in addition to their structural disadvantages, progressive Christians face thorny dilemmas regarding authority/legitimacy, rationalization, de-mystification, disenchantment, charisma (or the lack thereof), and profanation that, though not insurmountable, are not easily resolved.

Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain: The Transition to Democracy after Franco

Part I. Interpreting the Spanish Transition to Democracy: 1. Introduction 2. Theories of transition and transitions in theory 3. Spain: a history of divisions and democracy Part II. The Symbolic Basis of Spanish Consensus: 4. The spirit of consensus: the core representations of the Spanish transition 5. The curtain rises: the first democratic elections 6. The 1977 Moncloa pacts and ritualization of communality Part III. Conflict and Consensus in the Institutionalization of Spanish Democracy: 7. Democratic reaggregation and the 1978 Constitution 8. The Basque exception: questions of communality and democracy 9. Conclusion and epilogue.