Punishing the Wrongdoers During the Portuguese Transition to Democracy: A Comparative Historical Analysis

Abstract

What leads democracies to make the leaders and collaborators of the authoritarian regimes that precede them accountable? In this chapter, we offer a contribution to the study of transitional justice by developing a case study analysis of the transitional justice process that took place in Portugal during the second half of the 1970s. In Portugal, a number of retributive measures were implemented in the years that followed the transition ‘by rupture’, including trials and a vetting process. From 1974 to 2017, more than 100 laws and decree-laws on transitional justice were issued, predominantly covering retributive justice and reconciliation. Using comparative historical analysis, we show it was the combination of a profound rupture with the past, the predominant role of political actors that based their action on an alleged revolutionary legitimacy in the early stages of the transition, the limited role played by the judiciary in the transitional justice process, and the strong left-wing bias during the 18 months of the transition that produced the outcome.