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Portugal The Social State
President Tomás appointed Marcello José das Neves
Caetano to
succeed Salazar as prime minister, although the regime did
not
admit for some time that Salazar would not be returning to
power.
Caetano was a teacher, jurist, and scholar of
international
reputation who had been one of the drafters of the 1933
constitution. Considered a moderate within the regime, he
had
taken unpopular stands in opposition to Salazar. He had
resigned
as rector of Lisbon University in 1960 in protest over
police
repression of student demonstrations. Unlike Salazar he
came from
the upper middle class, was ebullient and personable, and
sought
contact with the people.
It was clear from the start that Caetano was a
different sort
of leader. He spoke of "evolution within continuity,"
change fast
enough to keep up with expectations but not so fast as to
antagonize conservatives. He brought technocrats into the
government and eased police repression. The elections held
in
1969 were the freest in decades. He even altered the
nomenclature
of the regime; the New State became the Social State, but
it
remained essentially an authoritarian regime.
In contrast to Salazar, Caetano advocated an
expansionist
economic policy and promoted rapid development and
increasing
consumption without, however, supplementing the means of
production. The consequence of liberalization was the
first
perceptible inflation in years, reaching 15 percent on
such
working-class staples as codfish and rice in the early
1970s.
Prime Minister Caetano had inherited Salazar's office
but not
his power nor, apparently, his skill as a politician and
economist. President Tomás, meanwhile, had emerged with
greater
authority, as Salazar's death put him in a position to
exercise
the constitutional authority of the presidency to the
fullest.
Deeply conservative and supported by an entrenched right
wing
within the official political movement, Tomás employed
threats of
an army coup to oppose Caetano's policy of liberalization.
Caetano took a harder line on Africa in an effort to head
off
opposition by the president and the officers close to him.
As the events of spring 1974 were to demonstrate, the
regimes
of Salazar's New State and Caetano's Social State had
depended on
personalities. In existence for nearly fifty years, the
institutions of the corporate state had never put down
roots in
Portuguese political soil. Apathy had not implied support.
On
April 25, 1974, the officers and men of the Armed Forces
Movement
(Movimento das Forças Armadas--MFA) ousted Caetano and
Tomás,
paving the way for a junta under General António de
Spínola to
take command of the Portuguese Republic.
* * *
A comprehensive introduction to the history of the
Iberian
Peninsula is a two-volume study by Stanley G. Payne, A
History
of Spain and Portugal. The best history of Portugal in
the
English language up to the First Republic is H.V.
Livermore's
A New History of Portugal. A succinct survey of
Portugal's
overseas empire is C.R. Boxer's Four Centuries of
Portuguese
Expansion, 1415-1825. Douglas L. Wheeler provides a
thorough
treatment of the First Republic in Republican
Portugal. A
sympathetic portrait of António de Oliveira Salazar can be
found
in Hugh Kay's Salazar and Modern Portugal.
Salazar's New
State is analyzed by Howard J. Wiarda in Corporatism
and
Development and by Tom Gallagher in Portugal: A
Twentieth-Century Interpretation. The standard history
of
Portugal in Africa is James Duffy's Portuguese
Africa.
Walter C. Opello, Jr. covers recent history in his book,
Portugal: From Monarchy to Pluralist Democracy.
(For
further information and complete citations,
see
Bibliography.)
Data as of January 1993
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