The «Second Portuguese Republic» under a historical perspective

Abstract

It is a lecture requested by the organizers of the seminar on the «Politics of Western Europe», jointly promoted by the Nuffield College of Oxford and the Department of Government of the London School of Economics and Political Science in March 1981. Thus the text is an oral comunication presented to a foreign audience relatively little acquainted with the Portuguese affairs. Even if the author thinks that it does not go beyond the limits of the journalistic and colloquial essayism, one has decided that it would worth while to reveated it to the Portuguese public. Facing the task of situating the present Portuguese political regime under a historical perspective, the author's argument line is that the consolidation of democracy in Portugal, as far as its long-term internal causes are concerned, is essentially due to two convergent trends: first, a liberal tradition long ago established in the stratum to which we may call, just to simplicity, traditional middle classes, including their connections with some segments of the class economically dominant; and second, the ascending aspirations and the expectations of a «new middle class» that was fighting for its mounting in the social scale after, so to say, the modale of the sixties. As a matter of fact, one may say that even the social composition of the leaders of the military coup reflect, under several ways, these convergent trends within the middle classes - traditional and modern.