Democratization as Collective Biography: Political Generations and the Long Transition in Southern Europe

17 December
Kostis Kornetis | The Autonomous University of Madrid
Democratization as Collective Biography: Political Generations and the Long Transition in Southern Europe

What do democratic transitions look like when viewed through the lives of those who experienced them? Rather than approaching democratization through institutions, elite bargaining, or constitutional change, this talk reconstructs the long transitions of Portugal, Greece, and Spain from the perspective of political generations. Drawing mainly on former activists' life stories it follows individual trajectories across dictatorship, transition, democratic consolidation, and their subsequent afterlives. The main argument is that democratization is best understood as a collective biographical process: a historical transformation produced through the interaction of grassroots mobilization, political socialization, and changing repertoires of contention. Individual life stories reveal not only how people participated in democratic change but also how they subsequently reinterpreted their experiences in light of later political crises. By bringing together oral history, historical sociology, and social movement studies, the talk offers a generational perspective on Southern Europe's democratic transitions that places activists -not institutions- at the centre of the story.