The state, the employers and Portuguese industry (1922-1957)

Abstract

This articles analyses the emergence and consolidation of corporatism in the authoritarian regime of Salazar and the New State and its adaptation to economic development until after the second world war. In the first part, the author characterises the features of the economic crisis in the 1920s and interprets the original form of the corporate solution as an attempt to sponsor the syndication of the producers in certain sectors, in doing so transferring to the state, and from the state to the producers, the economic and political costs of the organisation and monitoring of agreements between companies. Faced with the incoherent industrial structure and extreme weakness in terms of company organisation, this solution found widespread approval amongst the employers. However, corporatism carries with it the virus of decentralisation of the decision-making process and the state was rapidly excluded by autonomous forms of interest representation. The second section of the article looks at how the different economic regulation systems adapted to the cyclical upswing of the 1950s.