On April 25, 1974, a group of young military officers called the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forgas Armadas-MFA) planned and executed a nearly bloodless golpe de estado that deposed the government of Marcello Caetano and ended the comatose dictatorship established in 1932 by Ant6nio de Oliveira Salazar. The golpe opened the floodgates of change and, within months, the MFA dismembered the political police, the infamous International Police for the Defense of the State (Policia Internacional e da Defesa do Estado-PIDE) and other fascistic and militaristic organizations such as the Portuguese Legion (Legiio Portuguesa), the Naval Brigade (Brigada Naval), and the Portuguese Youth Movement (Mocidade Portuguesa); ended government censorship; promised elections for a constituent assembly; and lifted the ban on political parties and groups. Within the year, the MFA had jettisoned Portugal's 500-year-old colonial empire and embarked on an ambitious program to politicize the population and democratize the country's political institutions. In the spring of 1976, after a sharp swerve to the left and a subsequent return to moderation, the MFA relinquished power to Portugal's first freely elected government in nearly fifty years.1 While there is not much doubt that the parliamentary democracy of Portugal's Second Republic is strikingly different from the New State (Estado Novo) of the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship, it is important to ask now, some six years later: How significant have the politicization of the population and democraticization of political structures beneath the national level been? Have the changes that are so evident at the center actually penetrated to the periphery, especially the rural countryside? What changes have been made to democratize the structure and operation of local government? Have these changes been effective? Has there been any change in the position and behavior of local officials commensurate with these changes? Has the local policy formation process become at all democratic? And, finally, have the