Robert Michels, Political Sociology, and the Future of Democracy by Juan José Linz & H. E. Chehabi

Author:Juan José Linz & H. E. Chehabi [Linz, Juan José & Chehabi, H. E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History & Theory, Social Science, Political Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social, General
ISBN: 9780765803382
Google: 5msSnwEACAAJ
Goodreads: 488627
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2006-01-15T13:32:40+00:00

Tradition and Modernization on the Edge of Europe

Any discussion of our problem has to start from the fact that Spain is a Western society, fully Christianized and located in Europe. Even though Spaniards and foreigners play with the boutade that Africa begins in the Pyrenees, and cultural historians like Américo Castro stress the unique non-Christian heritage of Spain, the problems of modernization in that context are essentially different from those of societies belonging to other cultural spheres such as the Islamic, Buddhist, or Hindu worlds. The problem confronting Spaniards is not Westernization as an alternative to a distinct traditional culture, nor is it whether the elements to be imported from the West are compatible with Spain’s culture. The problem is both more simple and more complex than that. Being a European country, Spain was obviously more similar to other European societies when Spanish modernization began than any non-Western society was.

Initially the problem seemed simple. It was a question of rectifying the course of Spanish history so as to bring it in line with the more advanced countries and to accelerate the process of change in order to catch up with the rest of Europe. This meant throwing overboard a ballast of institutions that had retarded Spain or caused it to diverge from the course followed by more successful nations. This raises the question as to when Spanish society and culture began taking a path different from the Western European mainstream in the first place. The enlightened reformers of the eighteenth century and the liberals of the nineteenth century thought that the common heritage of institutions and culture was such that it was sufficient to discard certain accretions that appeared to be distinctive but that were ultimately secondary, like the Inquisition. All Spain had to do, therefore, was to carry out reforms that other countries had already realized, or, alternatively, to return to certain common European origins abandoned at some critical point, particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These reformers perceived their struggle against outdated and dysfunctional traditions as similar to the struggle of reformers elsewhere, and therefore looked for support abroad. But their opponents had a similar perception of their own situation: the defenders of absolutism and the alliance of throne and altar also felt part of a European antirevolutionary coalition. Each side was ready to seek the support of like-minded foreign allies: the armies of Louis XVIII shored up the throne of Ferdinand VII against the liberals, and the British helped in the struggle of Ferdinand VII’s liberal successor, Queen Isabella II, against reaction and Carlism. Practically every major political manifesto or constitutional preamble referred to Europe either as a model or as an admiring spectator of these efforts17; Ferdinand VII’s 1823 decree voiding all the acts of the three-year liberal period and re-establishing absolutism was no exception. The influence and support of foreign powers, moved either by ideology or by their own interests, was a constant feature of political conflict in Spain.

It was the defeat and increased

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