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Analyses the extent to which Portuguese democracy has become presidentialized both politically and electorally. Several indicators are used to measure the growth of leadership autonomy within the party, namely, the election modes of leadership bodies; the control over candidate selection for the national parliament; the degree of autonomy to draw up the electoral programme; and the ability to decide on coalitions. Concerning the strengthening of leadership within government, the chapter explores data concerning the increase in Prime Minister’s resources. In this section, the enduring importance of senior party members within government is shown, which counters the presidentialization trend. Looking to the electoral face of presidentialization, evidence that points to the importance of leaders in the vote choice of the Portuguese electorate is presented.

Certain indicators point to greater autonomy and strength of the party leader/Prime Minister. The 1982 revision of the Constitution that circumscribed Presidential powers in ‘normal circumstances’ and the concentration of the vote in the two major parties, which has occurred since 1987, are important factors that explain the emergence of a stronger premier, and more candidate-centered electoral processes. Yet, the enduring semi-presidential nature of the regime, as well as the evidence of the importance of the party members within government, cautions against characterizing the Portuguese political system as having become fully presidentialized.

The military coup of 25 April 1974 in Portugal initiated the ‘third wave’ of democratic transitions in southern Europe. The transition and subsequent process of democratic consolidation evolved in various stages, each with a corresponding phase of ‘transitional truth and justice’ initiatives and counter-initiatives: the first stage, from 1974 to 1976, was the ‘revolutionary’ period, comprising the downfall of the regime and the crisis of state that followed; the second stage, between 1976 and 1982, was a period of ‘normalization’, constitutionalization and incipient democratic consolidation; during the third stage, from 1982 onwards, the process of democratic consolidation has proceeded apace. This chapter examines these stages in different sections: Introduction; A Portuguese Settling of Accounts; The Purge Process; The Dual Legacy Discourse and the Consolidation of Democracy; and Conclusion.

The modern political histories of Greece, Portugal, and Spain display a common theme of escape from an authoritarian rule. This lends support to an application of the ‘contagion’ theory of democratization outlined in the first chapter, by which the European Union is seen as having played a major role in promoting and generalizing a liberal–democratic pattern of values, fomenting desires in these three countries to emulate the Western European achievement, and encouraging convergence through integration.

Political scientists who have written about party decline (the ‘crisis of parties’) fall into two broad categories: one group includes those who focus their analysis on the organizational structures, functions and membership of parties, and their performance in government and in representative institutions; a second group has been more concerned with citizens’ attitudes towards political parties, although their empirical studies have rarely focused on the question of the decline in public support for parties, and have instead been primarily concerned with themes such as the evolution of party identification, electoral participation, and the traditional social ties linking parties to citizens. Despite widespread interest in this theme, there have been surprisingly few empirical studies of the extent and possible origins of anti‐party attitudes. Aims to fill this gap in the literature by systematically exploring the hypothesis of the ‘decline of parties’ from the standpoint of citizen support for these key institutions in four Southern European democracies, although the existing literature on the topic has produced contradictory findings. Has four complementary objectives: (1) to develop and discuss attitudinal indicators that can serve as adequate measures of anti‐party sentiments; (2) to observe the evolution of these indicators over time in a variety of contexts; (3) to discuss their relationship with other aspects of political behaviour; and (4) to speculate about the origins of anti‐party sentiments. While most of the analysis focuses on Spain, similar attitudes are also explored in Portugal, Italy, and Greece, in an effort to determine the extent to which an increase in anti‐party sentiments represents a general feature of contemporary West European democracies, and to what extent it maybe linked to a broader concept of political disaffection; also examined are some of the consequences of this phenomenon with regard to electoral behaviour, to psychological identification of citizens with parties, and to the overall level of involvement of citizens in public life.

In the late 1960s, the wider framework for and the basic structure of the North Atlantic alliance was being challenged on virtually all fronts at the same time, causing the need for a reappraisal of relationships. These challenges included: the continuing Cold War with the Soviet Union and its allies, where the confrontation continued, but was now being combined with détente (i.e. cooperation on important military, political, and economic issues); the change in the American–European relationship resulting from Europe striking out more on its own; the perceived decline of the US by the Nixon administration and its resulting need to cooperate with the other economic centres of the world; outside Europe, the combination of the rise of OPEC and the volatility of the Middle East, which highlighted a growing energy problem that was to prove quite troublesome in Atlantic relations; and the effect of the rise of Japan and the Pacific rim in redefining the role and importance of Western Europe in the world. All these redefinitions imposed a strain on American–European relations in the period 1969–1977, but even though the resulting conflicts were now more structural than they had been earlier, they were still contained within the alliance framework, for both the US and Western Europe still needed a certain degree of cooperation and mutual dependence. The four main sections following the explanatory preamble to this chapter discuss various aspects of this conflict and cooperation between the US and Western Europe. They are: The US, Western Europe, and Détente; Nixon–Kissinger's Reappraisal of European Integration, 1969–1976; The Southern Flank [of Europe], Communism, and the US—a discussion of the political situations in Portugal, Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Turkey, Italy (and Iceland); and Conflict, but Still Primarily Cooperation.

This chapter on the national co-ordination of European Union (EU) policy in Portugal is divided into three main sections. The first deals with the development of the country’s EU policy co-ordination machinery. In the second, the structure and culture of the present EU policy co-ordination machinery is thoroughly examined. The last section focuses on the interaction of the EU policy co-ordination machinery and the political and administrative opportunity structures.

The Portuguese permanent representation is regarded as an important part of the national system for EU policy co-ordination, and the Portuguese administration tends to send its best officials to the mission in Brussels. The permanent representation was created after Portugal became a member of the European Union in 1986, and from the very beginning it was influenced by the missions of other member states, the main models being the permanent representations of France and the UK. The special relationship of Portugal to these countries shaped the organization and operation of the Portuguese permanent representation. The lessons learnt were not so much related to the structure of the permanent representation, which is similar to those of other member states, but more to the skills and the way the members of permanent representation do their jobs, which is related to the experience of those civil servants in the French and British administrations before they were sent to the permanent representation. The different sections of the chapter discuss: the organization of the Portuguese permanent representation, its personnel, its internal functioning and working methods, its role, its capacity to implement ambitions, its success, and the simplicity and efficiency of national EU policy co-ordination structures in Portugal.

The extreme right never took hold in Spain, Portugal, and Greece. Their relatively new democratic regimes as well as socio-economic change eliminated the foundations of right-extremist values, and distanced the public from its traditional authoritarianism and neo-fascist heritage. Moreover, the extreme right did not provide sufficient organisational and political articulation for the populist anti-system protest during the mid-1980s, thus failing to attract a sizeable audience.

After thirty years of Portuguese democracy, a democratic political class is still emerging but has already become quite stable and cohesive over time. The chapter brings to the fore the difficulties that the Portuguese political class had and has to overcome, above all the patrimonial heritage of the authoritarian regime. It includes original data on the size of the political class and what difficulties it is encountering to achieve a higher level of professionalization. The relationship between the political class and the public is also given special prominence.

This chapter examines telecommunications development in Macau. The telecommunications infrastructure was built under the monopoly of CTM (Companhia de Telecomunicações de Macau) — a joint venture between Cable and Wireless, Portugal Telecom International, CITIC Pacific, and the Macau SAR government. The monopoly was partially ended in 1999 when the twenty-year build-operate-transfer franchise, granted in 1981, was extended to 2011, but only for fixed line and international gateway services. Competition with CTM's GSM 900/1800 MHz mobile services was introduced in 2001 when Hutchison and SmarTone from Hong Kong were licensed to operate GSM.

This chapter explores the ways in which the opening of a direct Ottoman sea route to the Indies during Selim's reign closely corresponded, in its general contours, with a similar process that had already taken place in Portugal during the 15th century. For the Ottomans, as for the Portuguese before them, this was a process that included three principal components: first, a growing awareness of the cultural and physical geography of an area of the world that was previously almost totally unknown to them; second, a rising interest in the economic potential of trade with the East, most noticeable with reference to the spice trade; and third, the articulation of an entirely new set of political ambitions and imperial claims to universal sovereignty, which would shape the course of future expansion. In order to fully appreciate this parallel development, however, it is necessary to consider the ways in which both the Ottomans and the Portuguese, in the decades before their history of contact with the Indian Ocean had even begun, shared a similar intellectual preparation for the dawning Age of Exploration.

In this chapter, price stickiness in Portugal is analyzed on the basis of qualitative data coming from a survey conducted by the Banco de Portugal. The main conclusions are the following. First, there is a considerable degree of price stickiness: most firms do not review or change their prices more than once a year, while time lags in price adjustments after shocks were found to be significant. Second, prices seem to go down more frequently than what is normally assumed: slightly more than 30 percent of total price changes are price decreases. Finally, customers' preference for stable prices, which take the form of implicit contracts, is apparently the main reason for the stickiness observed in prices