01321pab a2200133 454500008004000000100002200040245003400062260000900096300001400105362000800119520101200127650001401139773003401153180718b2005   xxu||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d  aMorlino, Leonardo  aAnchors and democratic change  c2005  ap.743-70.  aSep  aAnalyses of consolidation and internal crisis need to complement each other to better explain the change within a democracy. This article integrates, revises, and develops the results of the existing literature starting from the empirical results of a systematic, comparative empirical research on the Southern European countries. The main theoretical conclusion concerns the salience of the process of democratic anchoring, when consolidation is considered, and de-anchoring with reference to crisis. The different sections of the article analyze the notions of anchors, anchoring, and de-anchoring; the connections with legitimation, democratic consolidation, and crisis; the patterns of consolidation and crisis building in the four Southern European cases; and the explanations and the theoretical background of anchoring and de-anchoring. The concluding remarks illustrate the possible research developments with reference to other areas and the salience of anchoring for every democracy. - Reproduced.  aDemocracy  aComparative Political Studies