ABSTRACT
P.G.A. Pocock once described his scholarly enterprise as “the history of political thought, studied as the history of change in the self-conceptualization of political societies” (Pocock 1957: frontis page). We find this an attractive framing for our task, writing about “learning to lose” as an idea and as a practice. The title of the volume, Learning to Lose, arises from a question first raised by the literature on transitions to democracy in Latin America and Southern Europe (O’Donnell et al. 1986) and subsequently in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet empire and East Asia. In the transition from some form of authoritarian rule to some version of democracy, can the party being displaced or the party that follows “learn to lose”? What are the conditions and the reasons that will lead a party that loses power to believe that it will be allowed to regain it? What are the conditions and the reasons that lead a party that has gained power to allow a formed opposition to challenge it?
