The Authoritarian Past and South European Democracies: An Introduction

It is the object of the contributors to this volume to compare how Southern European democracies have reacted to past authoritarian regimes. This introduction has three sections. In the first we seek to frame the concepts of authoritarian legacies, transitional justice and the politics of the past as they are applied here. In the second we analyse the forms of transitional justice that were present during the processes of democratisation in Southern Europe, while the third section presents an outline of the volume and of the contributions made by its authors.