How the Past Shapes Struggles for Equality: Contrasting Legacies of Reform and Revolution

How do legacies of the past – many of them cultural in nature – condition ongoing struggles for equality, leading to significant differences in the extent to which formally democratic political systems genuinely offer political inclusion to low-income and other socially marginal sectors ? Where such legacies play an important role in configuring the opportunity for socially inclusionary politics their causal impact is by nature at least somewhat case specific in ways that reflect national socio-political trajectories of change.  But do large-scale international structures and global, or in any case international, dynamics limit the ability of such case-specific logics to matter in shaping political and distributional outcomes? These are the questions, to be addressed.  The analysis will take up these theoretical issues through the vantage point offered by a strategically chosen paired comparison of Portuguese and Spanish democracy, but also through broader cross-national comparisons and theoretical debates.