Abstract
How can the extraordinary stock of social capital that underpinned the consolidation of democracy in Spain be explained? Certainly, it cannot be attributed to a vibrant and robust civil society. Nor can it be explained away as a product of Spanish history. Prior to the transition to democracy in 1977 there was no history in Spain of autonomous cooperation between the state and actors from civil society such as organized labor. Contemporary Spanish history is, after all, a long, tortuous tale of entrenched social conflict, especially class strife, which was at the heart of the Spanish Civil War and the collapse of the Second Republic. Moreover, the history of the labor movement in Spain, one of the pillars of the social concertation process, hardly predisposed it to engage in trust-based interactions with the state and the employers. The successful deployment of social concertation in Spain is more compelling still because attempts to erect analogous policies of negotiation and compromise by other democratizing societies have failed to get off the ground and have had the unintended out-come of exacerbating rather than alleviating social conflict. As shown in chapter 5, a dearth of trust among the social partners explains the failure of social pacts as a means for assisting in consolidating democracy in Brazil.
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Notes
Peter McDonough, Samuel H. Barnes and Antonio LĆ“pez Pina, The Cultural Dynamics of Democratization in Spain (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998), pp. 167ā168.
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For a broader view of collective bargaining under Franco see Jon Amsden, Collective Bargaining and Class Conflict in Spain (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1972).
For a broader view of the works councils in Spain see Juan N. GarcƱa Nieto, Workersā Participation in Management in Spain (Barcelona: Institute of Labour Studies, 1978) and Modesto Escobar, āWorks or union councils? The Representative System in Medium and Large Spanish Firms,ā Working Paper (Madrid: Instituto Juan March, 1993).
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See JosƩ FƩlix Tezanos, Crisis de la conciencia obrera (Madrid: Editorial Mezquita, 1982).
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For an overview of the role of the PCE in promoting clandestine groups before the transition see Guy Hermet, Los comunistas en EspaƱa (Paris: Ruedo IbƩrico, 1972).
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Manuel Contreras, El PSOE en la II RepĆŗblica: OrganizaciĆ³n e ideologia (Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones SociolĆ³gicas, 1981).
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Guillermo de La Dehesa, āSpain,ā in John Williamson, ed., The Political Economy of Economic Reform (Washington, D.C.: Institute of International Economics, 1994), p. 136.
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Ā© 2003 Omar G. EncarnaciĆ³n
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EncarnaciĆ³n, O.G. (2003). Political Institutions and Democratization in Spain. In: The Myth of Civil Society. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981646_4
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