ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the analyses of the transitions from authoritarian regimes and of democratic consolidations that have basically focused on the interplay of political, social, and economic organizations. It discusses personality conflicts which played a role in the demise of the pre-authoritarian regime, and party leaders enjoy an unusual amount of political visibility, strategic flexibility, and tactical discretion in the phases both of transition and consolidation. Party elites in Italy, Portugal, Greece, and Spain took part in different ways in the transition from the authoritarianism of their respective countries. They shrewdly exploited the various opportunities, institutional and social, political and cultural, to establish their organizations and to launch their activities. Conciliation and accommodation among party elites have also been accompanied by the possibility of alternation in power. The chapter explores that one may surmise that the game played by party leaders in southern Europe has been a very shrewd one.
