Pedro Tavares de Almeida

Portuguese Ministers, 1851–1999: Social Background and Paths to Power

Regime discontinuities involving the replacement of the governing elite as well as the reshaping of fundamental institutions and values are a distinctive feature of the political history of modern Portugal. The purpose of this contribution is to assess the impact of these successive regime changes on the composition and patterns of recruitment of Cabinet ministers the core group of decision-makers and to point out the most significant trends over time: that is, from the mid-nineteenth century, when the Constitutional Monarchy was consolidated, until the present democratic regime.This paper provides an empirical analysis of the impact of regime changes in the composition and patterns of recruitment of the Portuguese ministerial elite throughout the last 150 years. The ‘out-of-type’, violent nature of most regime transformations accounts for the purges in and the extensive replacements of the political personnel, namely of the uppermost officeholders. In the case of Cabinet members, such discontinuities did not imply, however, radical changes in their social profile. Although there were some significant variations, a series of salient characteristics have persisted over time. The typical Portuguese minister is a male in his midforties, of middle-class origin and predominantly urban-born, highly educated and with a state servant background. The two main occupational contingents have been university professors - except for the First Republic (1910-26) - and the military, the latter having only recently been eclipsed with the consolidation of contemporary democracy. As regards career pathways, the most striking feature is the secular trend for the declining role of parliamentary experience, which the democratic regime did not clearly reverse. In this period, a technocratic background rather than political experience has been indeed the privileged credential for a significant proportion of ministers.

Two Overwhelming Victories of the Portuguese Left: The 2004 European Election and the 2005 Legislative Election

The last two elections held in Portugal, for the European Parliament (June 2004) and the National Assembly (February 2005), have two main features in common: the severe punishment of the incumbent government, and an overwhelming triumph of the left. Individually, the big winner of both contests was the Socialist Party (centre-left) and, symmetrically, the big loser was the Social Democratic Party (centre-right). The outcome of the 2004 European election was, in a way, a premonition of the landslide result of the 2005 legislative election. The authors analyse the electoral campaigns and the results of each of these contests, and single out the connections between them.

Who Governs Southern Europe? : Regime Change and Ministerial Recruitment, 1850-2000

Portuguese ministers, 1851-1999 - social background and paths to power, Pedro Tavares de Almeida and Antonio Costa Pinto ministers and regimes in Spain -from the first to the second restoration, 1874-2002, Juan J. Linz et al ministers in Italy - notables, party men, technocrats and media men, Maurizio Cotta and Luca Verzichelli ministerial elites in Greece, 1843-2001 - a synthesis of old sources and new data, Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos and Dimitris Bourikos ministerial elites in southern Europe - continuities, changes and comparisons, Nancy Bermeo.

Attitudes of the Portuguese Elites towards the European Union

The purpose of this article is to present and discuss the data for Portugal of the IntUne survey on elite attitudes towards European integration. Despite some differences between the Portuguese and the European results of the survey, we find that the concept of ‘compound citizenship’ (M. Cotta, ‘A “compound” model of citizenship? European citizenship in the eyes of national elites’, Lisbon IntUne General Assembly, 27–30 November 2008) may be applied to the perceptions of Portuguese elites regarding the European Union, and the postulated combination of an indirect European citizenship with a direct one is also verifiable in Portugal. We hypothesise that this European ‘compound citizenship’ is not conflictive with national citizenship, possessing instead elements for strengthening the linkage between them.

Southern Europe: a Distinctive and More Pro-European Region in the EU?

The main aim of this article is to show to what extent it is possible to talk about the South European member states as a homogeneous region with respect to the topics of European citizenship addressed in this special issue. In particular, we will address this problem by exploring both the level of homogeneity of the attitudes developed by national elites within this area, and the level of distinctiveness of such attitudes compared with the pan-European trend.

Beyond Party Government? Technocratic Trends in Society and in the Executive

This book proposes to analyse, in a sample of European countries, the weight of technocracy in governments with the ambition of providing, in the first place, an accurate mapping of the phenomenon and, secondly, to explore some of the potential explanatory factors of its growing presence in Political Leadership. Our study concentrates its attention on Europe for three main reasons: First, this is the region of the world where party government has found its fullest development, but also where the party systems generated by the recent waves of democratization have been considered as substantially weaker. Secondly, Europe is the region where the parliamentary form of government is the most diffuse, but also where, in recent times, semi-presidential forms of governments have proliferated. Thirdly, Europe has seen with the EU, the development of a particularly strong form of multi-level governance. There are thus good reasons for an in-depth exploration of cabinet recruiting patterns in this area of the world.

The Primacy of Experts? Non-partisan Ministers in Portuguese Democracy

Portuguese democracy is a relevant case for comparison, because expert and non-partisan ministers (usually described as ‘the independents’) are to be found in large numbers. This chapter investigates the determinants of this pattern of ministerial recruitment and, in assessing the main hypothesis postulated in the literature, operationalizes the analytical distinction between politicians and experts, establishing their number and evolution over time, and sketches a tentative profile of both ministerial types, highlighting and contrasting a few significant differences.

Ruling the Empire: The Portuguese Colonial Office (1820s-1926)

Portugal was one of the first and most enduring European colonial powers of modern times: 1415 and 1975 mark the beginning and the end of a long imperial cycle that left many imprints in different continents of the globe. While a forerunner in the Great Age of Discoveries, in the 19th and early 20th centuries Portugal was a poor and rural country in the south periphery of Europe(1), with high illiteracy rates, economic backwardness and unhealthy public finances. This small State held, however, the sovereignty of vast areas in Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and Sao Tomé and Principe), while still possessing some small territories in India (Goa, Damão and Diu), in China (Macao) and in the Pacific Ocean (East Timor). Since the scramble