A 40th-year balance on the Portuguese Constitution: consolidation or decline of the political system?

Abstract

After forty years, it is now time to take a new look at the Portuguese Constitution of 1976 and think on how the political system has been working throughout these decades. Despite all the criticism to which the Constitution has been subject, and the fact that the health of our democratic institutions is worse than ever before, it is at least debatable that the Constitution is to be found guilty of such sins, or that a constitutional reform could possibly reconcile our citizens with democracy again. Instead, it seems that the main threats to democracy nowadays come from the outside, which demands a new approach to deal with the so-called “weakness of politics”, in a national State less and less sovereign every day, finding itself defenseless in a global world and with no economic power to defy its creditors.