ABSTRACT
The unambiguous triumph of democracy in Spain, a country notorious for its long history of civil wars, military coups and ethnic confl icts, raises the compelling question of what can be learned from this experience about the making of successful democratic states. Sustained analytical attention to this question could not be timelier because democratization is, arguably, the most pressing subject in international politics today. Although never before in the history of mankind have so many people enjoyed democratic freedoms-a cause for celebration to be sure-in an uncomfortably high number of countries the quality of democracy leaves a lot to be desired (Freedom House 2007). Indeed, many of today’s democracies are democratic in name only. In so-called “illiberal democracies” (Zakaria 2003), democratic institutions and practices, such as a constitution and routine elections, strangely coexist with widespread corruption, large-scale human rights violations, a total lack of governmental transparency and accountability and a head of state who behaves more like a monarch than a democratically elected leader. Russia under Vladimir Putin and Venezuela under Hugo Chávez are the most egregious examples of the distressing spread in popularity of the phenomenon of illiberal democracy.
