On the evolution of the economic coordination organisms connected with farming (I)

Abstract

Within the scope of a research on the extinction of the Farming Guilds of Employers («Grémios») and their Federations, achieved after the 25^th April, 1974 revolution, there was a chance of studying the trajectory of the main «economic coordination» organisms connected with the primary sector in Portuguese economy and created by the Salazarist State: namely, the National Juntas of Wine, Fruit and Cattle-breeding products; the Institutes of Cereals (today, EPAC), Olive Oil and Oleaginous products, and the Viticulture Council of the Green Wine Region. Such a study also enclosed the institutions that preceded those already mentioned; it is from it that one publishes, in the present article, a first theoretical chapter trying to state the «economic coordination» problem in terms of a relationship of State/civil society, suggesting that such a problem was not an exclusive of the Salazarist corporatism, since it reappears in Portugal today under the light (or in the shade) of very different purposes. The article also examines, in a second chapter, the advent of the «economic coordination» organisms, from the initial hesitations up to the establishment of the «definitive» forms that, during more than thirty years, would «coordinate and regulate the economic and social life of (some) activities superiorly»: the (incomplete) passage from the horizontal criterium to the vertical one in the delimitation of the  «coordinated» activities and, correlatively, the substitution (up to a certain point) of pre-corporatist organisms (Juntas, Regulating Councils, Institutes) for corporatist organisms (compulsory Grémios and their Federations) in the role of principal agents of the «coordination»; increasing engagement of the State in the «coordinating» action; etc. This study will go on with new chapters to be published in Análise Social later.