The «transition towards democracy» in Portugal: two critical studies in German

Abstract

After April 25^th there was a remarkable development of the social sciences in Portugal and, at the same time, as well as the Portuguese studies in social sciences achieved in other countries. There has been here a growing interpenetration of both procedures without excluding any «division of work» as to the issues and research lines. Thus one points out the importance of two studies published in Federal Germany recently. Under two perspectives almost convergent, the two authors analyse an issue not yet examined in detail by the political sociology: the set offactors, internal and external, that led the PS, in the years immediately after 1974, to make impossible the projects of a «socialist pluralism» (the subject of Rainer Eisfeld's book) or of a «third way towards socialism» (the theme of Bernd Rother's book).