Out of Africa and into Europe: Towards an Analysis of Portuguese Foreign Policy

Abstract

Although the purpose of this article is to analyse the foreign policy positions of the Socialist (Partido Socialista ps) government formed in July 1976 as the first constitutional government of the third Portuguese republic, the analysis will range much further. Five months is too brief a period for any definite assessment and the Socialists1 initiatives cannot be appreciated without extensive exploration of earlier developments. This background includes aspects of previous Portuguese foreign policy, the policies of other governments and institutions, and the domestic characteristics of the previous and present regimes all of which are interrelated in this case. The Portuguese experience runs counter to much 'established wisdom' on the relationship between external factors and internal characteristics. It does not fit the Prague model although this has been advocated by some and is feared by many others; nor does it approximate the Cuban pattern thereby probably avoiding the former. It clearly contradicts the Chilean experience of 1973 regarding the behaviour of most external actors and of the military (although some of those defeated by the alliance of the ps and 'the moderates' in the mfa [Movimento das For^as Armadas Armed Forces Movement] may not appreciate this and the poignant film on the fall of Allende, // pleut sur Santiago, has been showing in Lisbon for six months). The processes of regime formation and elaboration of foreign policy continue, however; and based on what has taken place so far the Portuguese experience is clearly important. For Portugal internally it means the end of a half-century of de facto dictatorship and structures of class repression in which the only real oppor-