ABSTRACT
Much has been written about Spain’s political transition from a personal dictatorship to a parliamentary monarchy as an exemplary achievement with significant lessons on how to ‘craft’ emergent democracies in Europe and other parts of the world (Di Palma 1990). A central theme in this literature has held that the prime source of regime change is to be ‘found predominantly in internal factors’ (O’Donnell and Schmitter 1986:18). More recently, the theme of regime change has been extended to the study of the international context of democratic transitions (Pridham 1991). The boundaries between external and domestic factors are characterized as increasingly ‘blurred’ as the incipient democratic state is incorporated into ‘the wider and more secure democratic polity’ of western Europe (Whitehead 1991:52). Yet there have been fewer comprehensive studies, and a range of specific studies, on democratic Spain’s external policies. One thoroughly argued work has weighed the changes in the process and content of Spain’s external relations in the light of the move to a parliamentary democracy (Niehus 1989). The present book examines the reshaping of democratic Spain’s external relations as both cause and consequence of the whole transition process from the pre-transition phase through to consolidation. The quality of Spain’s external relations has been fashioned in the context of a dialectical relation between the timing of the tasks and stages in the domestic dimensions of Spain’s transition, and the shifts in structure, processes and rhythms of the international context.
