during the presidency of the Democrat, Bill Clinton. Conversely when it
comes to the presidency the very different nature of the issues, where capacity
for economic management is seen to be more naturally a talent of those who
come from the rich corporate sector of American life, and where foreign
policy used to be seen as requiring a more aristocratic background, the
Democrats were less successful. Prior to Clinton’s election they had held the
presidency for only 19 years between 1945 and 1992.
Changing social and demographic patterns eventually forced the Demo-
cratic Party itself to change. Organized labour covers only a small fraction of
the working population; the massimmigrationflows that were the other base
of its power in the cities are over; and Republicans were increasingly doing
well in the South, previously almost a Democrat monopoly. Having been very
unsure of itself and of what it stood for in recent years, the party tried to
compete with the Republicans on their own ground of economic manage-
ment. It was the promise of Clinton in 1992 to get America back to work after
years of increasing unemployment and recession, and to guarantee broader
access to health provision, that restored the presidency to the Democratic
Party, after 12 years of Reagan and Bush administrations, with a strengthened
hold on Congress (subsequently lost). The defeat of Clinton’s Democrat
successor by the Republican George W. Bush, son of a previous president,
was so marginal, and so controversial, as to give no indication of the long-term
future for the party.
Democratic Transitions
Democratic transition refers to the experience of many countries in the last
decades of the 20th century as they moved from some form of non-democratic
government to liberal democracy, often very quickly. Until Portugal overthrew
the Salazar regime and set up a political system based on free elections in 1974/
75 there had been no sudden (indeed, revolutionary) appearance of a modern
liberal democracy. At about the same time, Greece overthrew the Colonels’
regime, and Spain, on the death ofFranco, also set up a democracy, a
constitutional monarchy like those found in northern Europe. Until this time
the West experienced democracy as something that developed slowly over
decades, if not centuries, as traditional ruling classes gradually broadened the
franchise and retreated from overt power. Alternatively, it had been the rather
disappointing experience of post-Versailles states in central Europe.
In 1989 a clutch of almost overnight democracies again occurred when, on
the collapse of the oldSoviet bloc, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
Romania and some other countries replaced Communist party rule with
parliamentary democracy in the space of a few months. The questions for
political science are, first, are there common factors in these apparently
Democratic Transitions