Political decision-making in the Portuguese New State (193339): The dictator, the council of ministers and the inner-circle (original) (raw)
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Monarchy and Republic in Contemporary Portugal: From Revolution to the Rise of Executive Power
El artículo aborda el proceso de construcción del Estado Contemporáneo portugués, que inició con la monarquía, igual que el resto de países europeos, y fue estableciendo los modelos que el momento y las doctrinas políticas aconsejaban: el modelo revolucionario que originó una Monarquía de Asamblea, el gobierno parlamentario que adaptó la monarquía al constitucionalismo. Sólo en el siglo XX se dio paso a la república, que tuvo que afrontar la crisis del parlamentarismo y buscar alternativas, convirtiéndose en un campo de ensayo de la nueva cultura política y su puesta en práctica, como la monarquía lo fue en el XIX. En todo el proceso, como en todos los países, fue característico el incremento progresivo del poder ejecutivo, especialmente en el modelo monárquico cuya única vía para constitucionalizarse fue el gobierno parlamentario. La república, sin embargo, dispone de más alternativas: el presidencialismo, el parlamentarismo, tomado de la monarquía, y sus diferentes mezclas. Se abordan los diferentes modelos que se conformaron en la monarquía y la república, del modelo de los legisladores das Necessidades al de los legisladores de São Bento (expresión de un diputado de la época) cuyos dos momentos en dos diferentes localizaciones vienen a simbolizar dos modelos diferentes de monarquía, el revolucionario y el de la Restauración europea. En la república, se aborda el interesantísimo momento que significó el debate constituyente en el que entraron en juego las culturas políticas ya enfrentadas en esas fechas, las antiguas y las nuevas, yendo desde el imperfecto parlamentarismo al semi presidencialismo, con todos los intermedios posibles. Se utilizaron como fuentes fundamentales, todos los debates constituyentes de la monarquía y la república, sobre la base del conocimiento y utilización por la autora de la doctrina política y constitucional que predominaba en cada época, de los modelos al uso en otros países, la comparación con España y los modelos de referencia. Igualmente la bibliografía más actual y la clásica e imprescindible, con especial atención a la portuguesa, así como a las nuevas corrientes historiográficas y de análisis sobre el republicanismo clásico y la nueva historia de las ideas políticas y la conformación del Estado contemporáneo.
e-Journal of Portuguese History, 2003
The political history of twentieth-century Portugal has recently become the focus of intense research by historians of that country. This article attempts both to summarise the political developments of the period and to provide an English-language readership with an introduction to the on-going debate. This debate is driven to a great extent by the attempt to explain the reasons for the longevity of Salazar´s New State and by the attempt to place it within a broader European context. As a result, the regime immediately preceding the New State, the First Republic, has been somewhat neglected by Portuguese historians.
Portuguese Ministers, 1851–1999: Social Background and Paths to Power
South European Society and Politics, 2002
This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of regime changes in the composition and patterns of recruitment of the Portuguese ministerial elite throughout the last 150 years. The 'out-of-type', violent nature of most regime transformations accounts for the purges in and the extensive replacements of the political personnel, namely of the uppermost officeholders. In the case of Cabinet members, such discontinuities did not imply, however, radical changes in their social profile. Although there were some significant variations, a series of salient characteristics have persisted over time. The typical Portuguese minister is a male in his midforties, of middle-class origin and predominantly urban-born, highly educated and with a state servant background. The two main occupational contingents have been university professors-except for the First Republic (1910-26)-and the military, the latter having only recently been eclipsed with the consolidation of contemporary democracy. As regards career pathways, the most striking feature is the secular trend for the declining role of parliamentary experience, which the democratic regime did not clearly reverse. In this period, a technocratic background rather than political experience has been indeed the privileged credential for a significant proportion of ministers.
The aim of this text is to review the research undertaken in Portugal on the question of the medieval royal chancellery and diplomacy and their relationship with the study of royal bureaucracy. In this sense, we characterize the lines of development that are to be noted in the research undertaken into political societies and royal power based on the records of the royal chancellery in the last thirty years. Initially, we focus our attention on the relationship established between the royal chancellery and diplomacy and later we highlight the main themes and problems studied under the scope of the social history of institutions. Finally, we refer to the use of prosopography as a method applied to the study of medieval Portuguese elites. Key-words: royal chancellery and diplomacy; royal power; political elites; historiography; Portugal; Middle Ages.
Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses (2005), Correspondência diplomática irlandesa sobre Portugal, o Estado Novo e Salazar (1941-1970), Biblioteca Diplomática, Ministério dos NegÓcios Estrangeiros, Lisboa,, 2005
A magisterial piece of work, collected and then written by Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses, whose book I gladly published and prefaced. The title of the book hints at what the volume is about. Neither Portugal nor Ireland got directly involved with the Second World War, preferring neutrality -- albeit in terms of what Salazar creatively ultimately called "collaborative neutrality". This book includes letters exchanged by the Chancelleries of both countries, namely as regards the Irish Government’s interest (a country still under the shadow of Eamon de Valera, who rather openly liked Mussolini's political stances as, initially at least, did Salazar) in Portugal's position in what concerns the relationships, partly economic, but largely economic, to both Allies and Axis countries. The letters show that, while at first enthusiastic with Portugal's stances and positions, Ireland slowly drifted away from Salazar's positions after WW2.