The southern European NICs

To interpret the responses of Greece, Portugal, and Spain to changes in the international political economy over the past decade, I would like to borrow eclectically from the conceptual frameworks developed by both Ellen Comisso and Peter Katzenstein. From the former, I take the stress on the centrality of politics and choice and the notion that state structures create the possibility for a course of action without determining the action itself. From the latter, I retain the general proposition that during periods of hegemonic decline those possibilities for choice widen and include the option of changing state structure itself. To these I would add that the nature of options, the flexibility of response they imply, and the realm of choice itself depend heavily on the level of development of a particular state and civil society as well as on their relationship with one another. The more negative and less reinforcing the relationship, the more the respective needs of civil society and state will conflict. The greater the conflict, the more circumscribed the range of options available to political actors. In the case of the southern European newly industrializing countries (NICs), the changing articulation between civil society and the state and the external pressures influencing it inform both the evolution of domestic structures and the policy choices of elites within them.