Democratisation: The Electoral Nexus

This book is about the role played by elections in processes of transition from authoritarianism and the subsequent consolidation of democratic rule. In this, the lessons drawn from the Spanish experience after the Franco dictatorship in 1975 are assessed. Many have pointed to the fact that the political elites that forged the transition from authoritarianism sought to institutionalise a set of societal divisions into manifest political cleavages through free and competitive elections in a sequential fashion. Thus, the overarching question guiding the investigation in this study is to what extent we may identify a nexus between the elite efforts to guide the process of turning societal divisions into manifest cleavages and the structuring of electoral behaviour along these very same cleavages. Drawing on electoral returns from the 8.000 Spanish municipalities an answer to the following question is provided: How and to what extent may electoral participation and party choice in Spain between 1977 and 2000 be understood in relation to how the parties and voters handled the challenges posed by the transition from authoritarianism and democratic consolidation?