The development of Portugal: a brief portrait five decades after April 25th.

Abstract

This article discusses Portugal’s socioeconomic development after the 1974 Revolution based on the objectives set forth in the MFA Program and according to three dimensions: social protection and public provision; labor regulation and income distribution; and ownership of the means of production. It concludes that Portugal transitioned from a high-intensity democracy during the revolutionary period to a social-liberal regime, maintaining semi-peripheral characteristics and contradictions between social advances and limitations on economic democratization. The article also analyzes the role of the social sciences in these processes, from the debates around the semi-peripheral condition to contemporary blockages in the housing sector.