Search

"Six Books in Search of a Subject or Does Federalism Exist and Does It Matter?."'1 As the title suggests, the conclusions of the review were not very kind to the field of comparative federalism. Riker, in fact, questioned the very existence of federalism itself by stating that "federalism is no more than a constitutional legal fiction which can be given whatever content seems appropriate at the moment."2 When it came to whether or not federalism mattered, he was equally harsh. "Does federalism make any difference in the way people are governed? And the answer appears to be: Hardly any at all."3 Riker's bleak verdict on the state of the literature reflected the divisions in federalism studies in 1969. More than thirty-five years later, the field of

In a 1970 essay that marked the beginning of a new wave of writing on democratization, Dankwart A. Rustow argued persuasively that democracy is the fruit of "choice" and "conscious decision" on the part of political elites.' This perception seems widely shared, for our current literature is full of tactical insights on how elites might be induced to choose democracy over alternative political systems. This essay focuses on the tactics of the transition period, defined as the time between the breakdown of the dictatorship and the conclusion of the first democratic national elections. It examines what I call the "moderation argument": that radical popular organizations threaten democratic transitions if they fail to moderate their demands and behavior as the moment of elite choice approaches. Implicit and explicit variations of the moderation argument are widely purveyed, and this essay assesses their merits in light evidence from Iberia, Latin America, and Asia. It concludes by explaining when the moderation argument does and does not hold.

I must acknowledge . .. that I would have been wiser had I been more moderate in my criticism of the Giolittian system. For while we Italian crusaders attacked him from the Left, accusing him of being-as he was-a corrupter of Italian democracy in the making, others assailed him from the Right because he was even too democratic for their taste. Our criticism thus did not help to direct the evolution of Italian public life toward less imperfect forms of democracy but rather toward the victory of ... reactionary groups .... As for the results of the Fascist dictatorship in contrast with those of Italian democracy in the making, they are here before our very eyes. Let us hope that the Italians will not be the only ones to learn from that frightful experience.1

Authoritarian regimes are ever present but not everlasting. On a global level, they seem always to be with us, but as individual units they emerge and disintegrate. Until recently, the disintegration of authoritarian regimes received less scholarly attention than it deserved, in part because authoritarian regimes were thought to be relatively resilient and in part because authoritarianism became associated with a specific regime type in the 1960s, when so many classic examples of authoritarian rule were still intact.' Struck with "their impressive policy flexibility," "their extraordinary persistence,''2 and their capacity not only to "adapt to" but to "determine the course of" social change,3 scholars who studied authoritarian regimes were unlikely to address the question of disintegration at all. All of this has changed as examples of redemocratization proliferate and scholars scurry to explain why. Though most of the current research in this area focuses on the causes of redemocratization, I focus here on the democratic aftermath of authoritarian rule. Specifically, I am interested in what might be called "transition elections," the first national electoral contests which follow the restoration of political freedoms.4 This is a neglected but important area of investigation, for the party that wins the transition election plays a key role in the consolidation of democracy, often writing a new constitution, deciding the fate of the old guard, and rewriting the "rules of the game." What are the factors that determine the type of party that first gains control of the redemocratized state? This is the central question that motivates this research.