Civil society organizations and democratization processes. Some reflections

The paper will address the debate on the role of civil society in democratization processes. Transitologists had focused on elites’ behavior, recognizing only a limited role to social movements and similar actors. The "velvet revolutions" of 1989 focused instead attention on processes of democratization from below, recognizing the role of civil society organizations in both democratization by pacts (Poland and Hungary), and democratization by rupture (GDR and Czechoslovakia). Social movement studies have indeed stressed the role of protest in regime changes. In research on the 1989 wave of democratization the role of civil society organizations and protest has however been problematized as oppositional, organizations and mass insurgencies seemed to follow different trajectories. This debate is relevant to understand also other waves of democratization, such as the previous one in Southern Europe and the successive ones, up to the "Arab Spring".