Project description
From crisis to democracy: how the 1970s shaped southern Europe’s economies
The Eurozone crisis revealed weaknesses in Greece, Portugal and Spain – three countries that became modern democracies in the 1970s. Did their shift to democracy shape their economies? Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the PRIDE project looks at how the economic crisis of the 1970s influenced this transition. It explores whether the crisis helped end dictatorships and led new democracies to adopt policies such as deregulation, spending cuts and borrowing from abroad. These are choices that may have contributed to the Eurozone crisis. By studying eight countries, the project will provide new insights into southern Europe’s recent history, create open and accessible data, and highlight the long-term effects of crisis-driven decisions.
Objective
Globalisation has put democracy to the test. Two decades of stagnation, populism, COVID-19 and economic warfare have revealed deep tensions between open markets and democratic governance—and scholars have responded. Political scientists have linked globalisation to rising inequality in high-income countries. Historians have traced how the 1970s economic crisis drove global economic convergence and laid the foundations for today’s socio-economic order.
Surprisingly, Southern Europe is largely absent from this debate on globalisation, democracy and the 1970s economic crisis. Yet it offers a vital case. The Eurozone crisis has shown the vulnerability of Greece, Portugal and Spain to capital markets and the destabilising effects on their societies and European integration. Nor were the 1970s a turning point just globally: this was also the period when these countries democratised. One key question thus remains: how did Southern Europe’s path to democracy, amid early globalisation, shape its economic foundations? The answer has been elusive due to a lack of comparative studies rooted in interdisciplinary research.
Until now. Building on the complementary strengths of the Experienced Researcher, Supervisor and hosting institution, The Price of Democracy (PRIDE) explores the 1970s economic crisis and its impact on democratisation in Greece, Portugal and Spain (1968–1985). It tests a core hypothesis: that the crisis hastened the fall of the dictatorships and led the new democracies toward deregulation, fiscal austerity, and external debt reliance, thus helping to set the stage for the Eurozone crisis. Fusing history and political economy, and based on research across 8 countries, PRIDE offers the first study of the transitions through the lens of globalisation. It sheds unprecedented light on Southern Europe’s history, creates open data for wider use, and equips policymakers and the public with lessons on interdependence, crisis-driven reform and its long-term effects.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- humanities history and archaeology history
- social sciences other social sciences development studies development theories global development studies globalization
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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75341 Paris
France
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