Patterns of Political Party Collaboration in a Pacted Democracy: Spain(1977-2000).

Do transitions by pact- ones in which the incumbent authoritarian elites engage in multilateral negotiation and compromise with democratic opposition elites ? depress the level of competition or contestation (substantively and behaviorally) across political parties in the subsequent democracy? This paper demonstrates - through a study of cross-party collaboration in Spain between 1977 and 2000 - that transitions by pact initially depress the degree of competition across political parties, as the democratization literature hypothesizes. However, while pact making produces birthmarks, the paper also demonstrates that pacted democracies are not necessarily frozen, but rather can be transformed into more competitive democracies. This suggests that transitions by pact are less prejudicial for long term democratic deepening than initially feared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]