Workers’ Control and Changes in Political Culture: Portugal's Alentejo 20 Years after the Revolution

Abstract

This article empirically tests three well-known hypotheses about the political effects of workplace democracy on workers. Specifically, it asks whether membership in worker controlled agrarian collectives in southern Portugal has had any long-term effects on its participants’ political culture. The results, based upon a comparison of baseline data collected in 1980 and a sample survey of 240 residents from the same county collected in 1994, suggest that the relationship between workers’ control and political participation, radicalization, class awareness and feelings of political efficacy may be explicitly dependent upon local environmental conditions. More narrowly, our survey results indicate the presence of a substantially different rural political culture from the one described by other scholars of the Portuguese Revolution and its agrarian reform sector.