RE-ENTERING ELECTORAL POLITICS Reputation and Party System Change in Spain and

This article examines change in the Greek and Spanish party systems between their pre- and post-authoritarian periods. While the Greek party system displayed substantial continuity, the Spanish system showed considerable change. We connect continuity in party structure with length of interruption of competitive electoral politics. Our argument relies on the idea of reputation to explain why Spanish party leaders were far less constrained in moving their parties along the policy space than their Greek counterparts. Political parties in Spain had less reputation for established policy positions than Greek parties. Our argument and its implications are formally derived from a model developed by Bowler. We evaluate some alternative explanations and conclude that reputation is a factor accounting for variation in party system change in these two cases. At the time of the transition party leaders were presented with different opportunities to redefine their respective parties ' policy positions. KEY W 0 R D S _ democratization _ elections _ Greece _ political parties _ Spain Studies of transitions l from authoritarian to liberal democratic regimes often note the importance of the length of authoritarian rule as a factor likely to affect the redemocratization process, but few studies explore any aspect of this relationship systematically (Pasquino, 1975; Diamandouros, 1982).2 One of the most important actors in the transition process are politi-cal parties (Pridham, 1990) as they structure alternative policy choices for voters. This article examines how the length of authoritarian rule- i.e. the length of the interruption of competitive party politics- affects continuity in the party system once liberal democratic regimes are reinstated. We argue that there is a negative association between the length of the electora