Political Recruitment and Elite Transformation in Modern Portugal 1870–1999: The Late Arrival of Mass Representation

Abstract

Abstract While the first forms of parliamentary institutions in Portugal can be traced back to the early thirteenth century, a modern form of parliamentary representation based on universal suffrage and full party competition was only established in 1975. Most of the history of Portuguese parliamentarism is characterized by regime discontinuity, patrimonial forms of representation, and last, but not least, lack of professionalization and routinization (Magone 1997a). The executive, thanks to its dominance over the parliamentary institution, played a major role in the control of access to parliamentary institutions until the Revolution of Carnations on 25 April 1974. The methods of control varied from the establishment of a sophisticated electoral machine, as happened in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and to violent means of coercion, as in Salazar’s authoritarian regime. The composition of Portuguese parliaments between 1822 and 1975 was heavily influenced or even fully defined by the respective ruling executive. Clientelism and patronage, together with nepotism and frequent cases of family inheritance, led to a high level of continuity of parliamentary personnel under the constitutional monarchy between 1870 and 1910. During the First Republic (1910-26), parliamentary elites were, on the contrary, to experience a greater discontinuity due to the high levels of political violence and governmental instability leading repeatedly to early elections.