Politics in a Changing Western World^1185

A nuclear power plant dwarfs a more traditional source of power.

cradle-to-grave social programs. With the recession of the early 1990s
reducing tax revenue, Western European governments reduced social ben­
efits, such as unemployment payments.

The Transition to Democracy in Southern Europe

During the 1970s, three southern European dictatorships became democra­
cies: Greece, Portugal, and Spain. Greece, the cradle of democracy, had
been controlled by a series of right-wing governments since its civil war in
the late 1940s. In 1967, military officers overthrew Greece’s first post-war
government of the left, ruthlessly crushed dissent, and imprisoned, and tor­
tured political opponents. The military dictators planned to seize the island
of Cyprus, which lies off the coast of Turkey and which both Greece and
Turkey had claimed for centuries. Relations between Greece and Turkey had
often been extremely tense. Now bitter disagreements over the form of a new
constitution in Cyprus led to fighting between Greeks and Turks. The Greek
Cypriot National Guard overthrew the government of Cyprus. At the same
time, the Cypriot Turks defeated the Greeks and declared the northeastern,
predominantly Turkish part of the island to be independent. Further fighting
ended in a cease-fire. Meanwhile, in Greece, the power of the generals, who
had not sent help to the Greek Cypriot insurgents, collapsed in 1974.
Greece became a republic in which conservative and Socialist parties took
turns in power.
In Portugal, authoritarian leaders, notably Antonio Salazar, dictator from
1932 to 1968, struggled inefficiently with economic backwardness. Thou­
sands of Portuguese went abroad as seasonal workers each year or emi­
grated permanently to other countries in Western Europe or in the Western
Hemisphere. At the same time, the dictatorship, determined to hold on to
Portugal’s African colonies at all costs, became entangled in a long, bitter