Until relatively recently most of southern Europe was governed by authoritarian dictatorships, but within the space of two decades more or less stable democracies have become established throughout the entire region. At the same time, backward peasant economies have been transformed by the injection of huge amounts of capital and new technology, into modern economies which are now approaching the size of the more established economies of Northern Europe.

Southern Europe is a major contribution to our understanding of European politics. The product of original research and synthesis on exceptionally wide literature, it provides authoritative and systematic coverage of the politics, economics and society of this important region of Europe from 1945, up to the 1994 election of Silvio Berlusconi's far right alliance in Italy.