The Oxford Handbook of Portuguese

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The Oxford Handbook of

PORTUGUESE
POLITICS
The Oxford Handbook of

PORTUGUESE
POLITICS

Edited by
J O R G E M . F E R NA N D E S ,
P E D R O C . M AG A L HÃ E S
and
A N T Ó N IO C O S TA P I N T O
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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 Table of Contents

Preface xi
Acknowledgements xv
List of Contributors xvii
Editors Bios xxi
Figures xxiii
Tables xxvii

SE C T ION 1 PA ST A N D P R E SE N T
1. From Problematic Laggard to Star of the South? The Comparative
Significance of the Portuguese Case 3
Robert M. Fishman
2. Democratization and its Legacies 18
António Costa Pinto and André Paris
3. Dealing with the Authoritarian Past 38
Filipa Raimundo
4. Social, Economic, and Demographic Change during the Portuguese
Democracy (1974–​2020) 53
Luciano Amaral
5. Empire and Decolonization in Portuguese Africa 70
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo and José Pedro Monteiro
6. The Centre-​Left and the Radical Left in Portuguese Democracy,
1974–​2021 88
André Freire
7. The Right and Far-​Right in the Portuguese Democracy (1974–​2022) 102
Riccardo Marchi and André Azevedo Alves
vi   Table of Contents

SE C T ION 2 P OL I T IC A L I N S T I T U T ION S
8. Semi-​Presidentialism in Portugal: Academic Quarrels Amidst
Institutional Stability 121
Octavio Amorim Neto
9. The Role of the Portuguese Parliament 136
Eunice Goes and Cristina Leston-​Bandeira
10. Executive Politics 149
Pedro Silveira and Patrícia Silva
11. Judicial Politics in Portugal 164
Nuno Garoupa and Lydia Tiede
12. Electoral System 181
Jorge M. Fernandes
13. Bureaucracy and Public Administration 197
António F. Tavares
14. Decentralization and Local Politics 212
Filipe Teles

SE C T ION 3 M A S S P OL I T IC S A N D VOT E R S
15. Portuguese National Identity: Historical Constructions and
Contemporary Expressions 227
José Sobral and Jorge Vala
16. Citizens and Politics: Support and Engagement 244
Pedro C. Magalhães
17. Election Campaigns 262
José Santana-​Pereira
18. Voting Behaviour 276
Ignacio Lago
19. Electoral Turnout 291
João Cancela
20. Mass Media and Political Communication 308
Susana Salgado
 Table of Contents    vii

SE C T ION 4 PA RT I E S A N D PA RT Y SYS T E M

21. Candidate Selection in Portugal 325

Carlos Jalali and Edalina Rodrigues Sanches
22. The Executive Political Elite 339
Pedro Tavares de Almeida
23. Political Parties and Party System 353
Mafalda Pratas and Fernando Bizzarro
24. Parties and Political Representation 371
Ana Maria Belchior and Conceição Pequito
25. Plus Ça Change? Party Regulation in Portugal (1974–​2020) 388
Ingrid van Biezen and Fernando Casal Bértoa

SE C T ION 5 S O C I E T Y
26. Gender and Politics in Portugal 407
Ana Espírito-​Santo and Ana Catalano Weeks
27. Interest Groups, Business Associations, and Unions 423
Marco Lisi and João Loureiro
28. Emigration and Immigration in Portugal 440
João Carvalho
29. Movements at the Border. Conflict and Protest in Portugal 457
Guya Accornero and Pedro Ramos Pinto
30. The Relations Between the Catholic Church and the Political
Arena in Portugal 472
Madalena Meyer Resende
31. Social and Economic Inequality 487
Carlos Farinha Rodrigues
viii   Table of Contents

SE C T ION 6 G OV E R NA N C E A N D
P U B L IC P OL IC I E S
32. The Portuguese Welfare State 507
Amílcar Moreira and Miguel Glatzer
33. Portuguese Labour Market Governance in Comparative Perspective 527
Alexandre Afonso
34. The Portuguese Macroeconomic Policy Framework 542
Fernando Alexandre and Pedro Bação
35. Education Policies 557
Ana Balcão Reis
36. Health Policies 573
Céu Mateus
37. Political Corruption in Portugal 589
Luís de Sousa and Susana Coroado
38. Taxation and Accountability at the Local Level 604
Mariana Lopes da Fonseca
39. Portugal and the Challenges of Economic Globalization 619
João Amador

SE C T ION 7 P ORT U G A L A N D T H E
E U ROP E A N U N ION
40. Portugal and the European Monetary Union 635
Margarida Duarte
41. Portugal in the European Union: Chronicling a
Transformative Journey 648
Laura C. Ferreira-Pereira
42. Politicizing Europe: How the EU Affects Political Competition
in Portugal 666
Marina Costa Lobo
43. Bailout Politics in Portugal (2008–​2020) 683
Catherine Moury and Elisabetta De Giorgi
 Table of Contents    ix

SE C T ION 8 F OR E IG N P OL IC Y A N D DE F E N C E
44. Portuguese Foreign Policy 701
Maria Raquel Freire
45. Portugal and Brazil 715
Andrés Malamud and Pedro Seabra
46. Portugal and Africa 728
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira
47. Security and Geostrategy 743
Bruno Oliveira Martins and Daniel Pinéu
48. The Military and Defence Policies 757
Helena Carreiras

Index 775
 Preface

Why publish an Oxford Handbook of Portuguese Politics? In the mid-​1970s, the military coup
that put an end to the Estado Novo regime in Portugal attracted significant international
attention. Almost overnight, social scientists and journalists from all over Europe and the
United States arrived in Lisbon and placed the country on the roadmap of comparative pol-
itics. The Portuguese democratic transition put a final nail in the coffin of the age of empires
and initiated what Samuel Huntington famously called ‘the third wave of democratization’,
which would later spread to the rest of Southern Europe, Latin America, Eastern Europe,
and parts of Asia and Africa. Since then, Portugal has joined the European Union, becoming
an advanced economy and one of the countries classified with ‘very high human develop-
ment’. In time, as Portuguese democracy became consolidated and Portugal became ‘just
another case’, international attention from social scientists waned.
For all its similarities in terms of economic and political development with most advanced
industrial democracies, Portuguese politics contain remarkable specificities that make
the country an interesting laboratory for several pivotal problems assailing contemporary
democracies and which warrant closer inspection. For one, the nature of the Portuguese
democratic transition in the 1970s—​unusually triggered by a coup conducted by mid-​
ranking military officers—​paved the way for a social revolution, whose legacies many argue
have survived to this day. As various authors have stressed, including several who have
contributed to this volume, those legacies can be recognized in the role of the state in the
economy, in political culture, in the repertoires of political action, and in the social cleavages
underlying the party system. Portugal provides therefore an important illustration of how
the understanding of contemporary politics benefits from an historical perspective that
addresses the origins of political regimes and their legacy to the future.
Furthermore, despite being an average country in the European context, Portugal is an
interesting case to explore in terms of its foreign policy. Positioned in the westernmost re-
gion of mainland Europe and coming from a centuries-​old empire that once—​and until ex-
ceptionally late—​held territories in four different continents, Portugal has turned to Europe
as a catalyst for democracy and development since the 1980s. This has resulted in a remark-
ably complex foreign policy, balancing the demands of transatlantic relations, European
commitments, and deep cultural and economic ties with former colonies. The country’s
post-​colonial legacy has been relevant not only in terms of international affairs, but also
within Portuguese society itself, raising issues related to social integration, racial attitudes,
and cultural and national identities that remain visible today.
Political institutions, parties, and mass political behaviour in Portugal also provide sev-
eral different points of interest. These include, first and foremost, the process through which
Portugal shifted from high levels of cabinet instability and party system fragmentation in
the 1970s and 80s to stable majority and minority cabinets and comparatively low levels of
xii   Preface

ideological polarization in the noughties. Today, however, Portuguese politics are in flux,
with higher cabinet instability and a changing party system, with the emergence of new
parties, including on the radical right. The consequences for the party system and political
competition remain to be seen. Furthermore, Portugal’s semi-​presidential system, with an
elected head of state whose role corresponds neither to the ‘all-​powerful’ French model nor
to the mostly ceremonial Irish one, is also an interesting case from a comparative point of
view, especially considering similar or comparable offices in Eastern Europe.
Finally, Portugal was at the very heart of the Eurozone crisis, becoming one of the
countries bailed out by the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) in the early 2010s. The social and political impact of that crisis—​particularly as it
manifested itself on partisan politics, electoral behaviour, and cabinet formation—​and the
way that this crisis was ultimately overcome have sparked intense interest from compara-
tive scholars. In comparison with similarly affected countries, the return to credibility in
international markets was quick and secured without the kind of political backlash observed
elsewhere, and the post-​crisis recovery in political trust and public support was more robust.
This becomes more interesting when we look at the causes, rather than the consequences,
of the Portuguese economic crisis itself. Although many of them were exogenous and
common to many other countries, it is also true that Portugal was already experiencing
a long period of protracted economic stagnation in the decade leading up to the Great
Recession. During the first decades of democracy, starting out as a fundamentally rural,
backward, and deeply unequal society, Portugal leapfrogged many of the developmental
stages that elsewhere had led to consolidated and effective welfare states, converging with
Europe in most social and economic indicators. However, in this century, comparatively
low levels of education and productivity, a rapidly-​ageing population, systemic regulatory
failures, extreme centralization, and flailing quality of governance seem to have combined to
pose enormous challenges to Portugal’s development prospects. The political economy and
the policy dimensions behind these challenges are central to this volume.
Portuguese social sciences have developed significantly over the past five decades. The
maturity of the field permits us to take stock of Portuguese specificities, and the comparative
leverage they allow, to produce a systematic and state-​of-​the-​art coverage in the English lan-
guage that has been missing thus far. The Oxford Handbook of Portuguese Politics aims to be-
come the contemporary reference text about Portugal and its political system. We hope that
political scientists, economists, historians, and sociologists take advantage of the wealth of
data and knowledge amassed in this volume and find more incentives to include Portugal in
their studies. Our Handbook includes 48 chapters, covering most aspects of Portuguese pol-
itics from an interdisciplinary perspective. The edition is divided into eight sections.
The first section looks at the Past and Present of Portuguese politics. It offers an overview
of Portuguese political developments since democratization in the 1970s. It begins with a
chapter outlining the comparative relevance of the Portuguese case. The subsequent chapters
delve into democratization and its legacies, the political and socio-​economic evolution of the
country since 1974, as well as the empire and decolonization process as a watershed moment
in Portuguese history. The section concludes with two chapters on the historical and cultural
roots of left-​and right-​wing politics in Portugal.
The second section looks at Political Institutions as the building blocks of Portuguese
democracy. These chapters cover a constellation of topics ranging from semi-​
presidentialism, a defining trait of Portuguese democracy since its inception, to legislative
 Preface   xiii

politics, executive politics, and judicial politics. Furthermore, this section contains work on
the electoral system, public administration and bureaucracy, as well as decentralization and
local politics.
Our third section examines Mass Politics and Voters, that is, a thorough analysis of
the demand-​side of mass politics. We start by looking at nationalism and national iden-
tity, in a chapter discussing how the Portuguese envisage the country’s imagined commu-
nity. Next, we examine how Portuguese citizens engage with and support democracy and
its institutions. This section further looks at election campaigns, voting behaviour, electoral
turnout, and mass media and political communication.
The fourth section turns to the supply side of mass-​politics by looking at Parties and the
Party System, that is, how political parties structure political competition by channelling
the demands of the citizenry. This part starts by examining candidate selection. In so doing,
it offers a detailed analysis of the recruitment mechanisms used by Portuguese parties.
Next, it moves on to political elites and executive leadership. In this part, we further include
a chapter on political parties and party systems whose content focuses on the internal or-
ganization of parties and the structuring of political competition. Furthermore, the section
includes a chapter on parties and political representation, focusing on ideological congru-
ence and citizens’ preferences. Section Four concludes with a chapter on party regulation in
Portugal over the past 50 years.
The fifth section looks at the Portuguese Society by unpacking a plethora of societal
aspects with direct implications for politics. It begins with a chapter on gender and pol-
itics, devoted to inclusion of women, from a highly patriarchal society to increasing par-
ticipation in political and economic life. Next, the section delves into interest groups,
business associations, and unions, followed by a chapter on emigration and immigration,
whose consequences loom large in Portuguese society. Subsequently, we move on to social
movements and protest, with a strong focus on the consequences of the Great Recession for
the revival of protest repertoires in Portugal. Next, there is a chapter dealing with the role of
religion in Portugal, with an emphasis on how the Church played a role in democratization
and how it subsequently adapted to its waning influence in society. The final chapter focuses
on social and economic inequality and its consequences for the functioning of democracy.
The sixth section examines Governance and Public Policies, with a view to under-
standing how a constellation of public policies has an impact on the quality of governance
and in fostering well-​being. More specifically, it opens with a chapter on the welfare state,
followed by comparative analyses of labour market policies and the macroeconomic policy
framework. Furthermore, it includes chapters on education and health policies, whose im-
portance is vital to promote social inclusion in Portugal, a highly unequal country. Next, this
section offers a chapter on corruption, whose goal is to analyse its impact on the quality of
governance, as well as a chapter on taxation and accountability at the local level. This sixth
part concludes with a chapter on how Portugal has dealt with the challenges of economic
globalization and increasingly open markets for goods and services.
The seventh section looks at Portugal and the European Union. It begins by providing a
chapter on Portuguese participation in monetary integration, focusing on its consequence
for economic growth, competitiveness, and how it influenced the 2011 bailout. The following
chapter takes a more general view by chronicling the historical roots of Portugal’s participa-
tion in European integration from 1986 through today. Subsequently, we look at the politi-
cization of ‘Europe’ and European integration in Portugal, and how it has changed domestic
xiv   Preface

political competition. This section concludes with a chapter on the roots and consequences
of the Eurocrisis in Portugal.
The eighth and final section unpacks Portuguese Foreign Policy and Defence. Since dem-
ocratization, Portugal’s position within the international arena has faced some tensions,
as it attempts to pivot between Europe, Africa, and the Atlantic. This final part of the book
begins with an overview of Portuguese foreign policy, followed by a more focused analysis
of relations with regions of interest, including Brazil and Africa. Next, the section includes
a chapter on security and geostrategy. It concludes with a chapter on the army and defence,
discussing the evolution of the role played by the army since democratization through to its
twenty-​first-​century role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
 Acknowledgements

Over the past 50 years, Portuguese social sciences have become a mature field of research.
The constellation and diversity of topics covered in this volume illustrate how the study of
Portuguese politics has come a long way since democratization when social scientists had
only a modest understanding of the fabric of Portuguese society. The editors are grateful to
all the authors for accepting the challenge of contributing to this Handbook. Their enthu-
siasm in embracing the project allowed us to put together an edition that, we believe, will
become a landmark in Portuguese social sciences. The chapters offer a wealth of analysis and
data that have hitherto been unavailable in a systematic fashion to international audiences.
We hope that the understanding of Portuguese politics in a comparative perspective will
benefit from these contributions.
We would like to express our gratitude to the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation
for supporting this ambitious project. The Foundation has played an invaluable role in
promoting the study of Portuguese society. We are grateful for the generous support from
Gonçalo Saraiva Matias. At the Foundation, Susana Norton has provided us with un-
wavering support. We would also like to thank João Tiago Gaspar for his inexhaustible pa-
tience with our many requests. Thanks are due to Rita Matos for an excellent job in editing
and proofreading this volume. We would like to thank the Guide team, especially Nuno
Cartaxo, for designing high-​quality figures for all chapters.
Finally, we are grateful to Dominic Byatt at Oxford University Press. His unfettered enthu-
siasm and support from the very first day we came to him with the idea of making an Oxford
Handbook of Portuguese Politics have been extremely important to this endeavour.
Jorge M. Fernandes
Pedro C. Magalhães
António Costa Pinto
 List of Contributors

Guya Accornero is Assistant Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal

Alexandre Afonso is Associate Professor of Public Policy at Leiden University, Netherlands
Fernando Alexandre is Associate Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal
Pedro Tavares de Almeida is Professor at FCSH-​UNL, Portugal
André Azevedo Alves is Associate Professor at Catholic University Lisbon, Portugal
João Amador is Guest Assistant Professor at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Portugal
Luciano Amaral is Associate Professor at NOVA SBE, Portugal
Octavio Amorim Neto is Professor of Political Science at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Pedro Bação is Assistant Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal
Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo is Associate Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal
Ana Maria Belchior is Associate Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Ingrid van Biezen is Professor in Comparative Politics at the University of Leiden,
Netherlands
Fernando Bizarro is a PhD student at Harvard University, USA
João Cancela is Assistant Professor at FCSH-​UNL, Portugal
Helena Carreiras is Associate Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
João Carvalho is a researcher at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Fernando Casal Bértoa is Associate Professor at University of Nottingham, United
Kingdom
Susana Coroado is a Researcher at University of Lisbon, Portugal
António Costa Pinto is Research Professor at the University of Lisbon, and Professor of
Politics at Lusófona University, Portugal
Margarida Duarte is Professor of Economics at the University of Toronto, Canada
Ana Espírito-​Santo is Assistant Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Carlos Farinha Rodrigues is Associate Professor at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Jorge M. Fernandes is Assistant Research Professor at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
xviii   List of Contributors

Laura C. Ferreira-Pereira is Professor at University of Minho, Portugal

Robert M. Fishman is Professor of Political Science and Sociology at Carlos III
University, Spain
André Freire is Professor of Political Science at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Maria Raquel Freire is Professor at the University of Coimbra, Portugal
Nuno Garoupa is Professor of Law at George Mason University, USA
Elisabetta di Giorgi is Assistant Professor at the University of Trieste, Italy
Miguel Glatzer is Associate Professor of Political Science at La Salle University, USA
Eunice Goes is Professor of Politics at Richmond University, United Kingdom
Carlos Jalali is Associate Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal
Ignacio Lago is Professor of Political Science at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain
Cristina Leston-​Bandeira is Professor of Politics at the University of Leeds, United
Kingdom
Marco Lisi is Associate Professor at FCSH-​UNL, Portugal
Marina Costa Lobo is Principal Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Mariana Lopes da Fonseca is Assistant Professor at University of St. Gallen, Switzerland
João Loureiro is Associate Researcher at FCHS-​UNL, Portugal
Pedro C. Magalhães is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Andrés Malamud is Senior Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Riccardo Marchi is Researcher at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Céu Mateus is Professor at University of Leicester, United Kingdom
Madalena Meyer Resende is Assistant Professor at FCSH-​UNL, Portugal
José Pedro Monteiro is Assistant Research Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal
Amílcar Moreira is Guest Assistant Professor at SOCIUS/ISEG, University of Lisbon,
Portugal
Catherine Moury is Associate Professor at FCSH-​UNL, Portugal
Bruno Oliveira Martins is Senior Researcher at the Peace Research Institute Oslo, Norway
André Paris is a PhD student at University of Lisbon, Portugal
Conceição Pequito is Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Daniel Pinéu is a lecturer at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Pedro Ramos Pinto is Associate Professor in International Economic History at
Cambridge, United Kingdom
 List of Contributors    xix

Mafalda Pratas is a PhD student at Harvard University, USA

Filipa Raimundo is Assistant Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Ana Balcão Reis is Associate Professor at NOVA SBE, Portugal
Susana Salgado is Principal Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Edalina Sanches is Assistant Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
José Santana-​Pereira is Assistant Professor at ISCTE-​IUL, Portugal
Pedro Seabra is Assistant Professor at University of Beira Interior, Portugal
Patrícia Silva is Assistant Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal
Pedro Silveira is a researcher at FCSH-​UNL, Portugal
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira is Professor of the International Politics of Africa at Oxford
University, United Kingdom
José Sobral is Senior Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Luís de Sousa is Assistant Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
António F. Tavares is Associate Professor at the University of Minho, Portugal
Filipe Teles is Assistant Professor at the University of Aveiro, Portugal
Lydia Tiede is Associate Professor at the University of Houston, USA
Jorge Vala is Emeritus Researcher at the University of Lisbon, Portugal
Ana Catalano Weeks is Associate Professor at University of Bath, United Kingdom
 Editors Bios

Jorge M. Fernandes is an Assistant Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences,

University of Lisbon. He holds a Ph.D. in Social and Political Sciences from the European
University Institute (2013). His research interests include representation, electoral systems,
political parties, legislatures, and coalitions. His work has appeared in journals such as
Comparative Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Political Behavior,
Legislative Studies Quarterly, Party Politics, and many others. He is the co-​editor of The
Politics of Legislative Debates (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Pedro C. Magalhães is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Social Sciences, University
of Lisbon. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Ohio State University (2003).
His research interests include public opinion, elections, and judicial politics. His work
has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, Comparative
Political Studies, European Journal of Political Research, Political Research Quarterly, West
European Politics, Experimental Economics, and many others. He has co-​edited volumes for
Oxford University Press and authored or co-​authored chapters in three Oxford Handbooks
(Executive Politics, Political Representation, and Spanish Politics).
António Costa Pinto is a Research Professor at the Institute of Social Sciences, University
of Lisbon and Professor of Politics at the Lusófona University (Ph. D., European University
Institute, Florence, 1992). He has been a visiting professor at Stanford University (1993),
Georgetown University (2004), a senior associate member at St Antony’s College, Oxford
(1995), and a senior visiting fellow at Princeton University (1996), at the University of
California, Berkeley (2000 and 2010), and at New York University (2017). He is a past presi-
dent of the Portuguese Political Science Association. His research interests include authori-
tarianism, democratization, and transitional justice, political elites, and the comparative
study of political change. Among his publications are Political Institutions and Democracy in
Portugal: Assessing the Impact of the Eurocrisis (2019, Co-​Ed.) and Technocratic Ministers and
Political Leadership in European Democracies, (2018, Co-​Ed).
 Figures

Figure 2.1 Popular vs clandestine anti-​Communist violence, 1975–​1976 26

Figure 4.1 GDP per capita in Portugal, Spain, and Greece as a percentage of GDP
per capita in richer countries (1960–​2019) 58
Figure 4.2 Gross birth and death dates, Portugal, 1960–​2018 (per thousand of
population) 60
Figure 4.3 Public spending as percentage of GDP, Portugal and average of European
countries (1970–​2018) 61
Figure 4.4 Gini coefficient, Portugal, several European countries and EU-​15 average,
1980–​2018 (per cent) 63
Figure 4.5 Top 0.1 per cent share, Portugal and several European countries,
1960–​2005 64
Figure 4.6 Population with secondary schooling, Portugal, Spain, Greece and
EU-​15, 1960–​2019 (per cent of population over 25 years of age) 66
Figure 8.1 The scores of Portugal’s semi-​presidential systems on the Doyle-​
Elgie scale of presidential powers compared with the average of their
counterparts around the world 126
Figure 8.2 Presidential approval in Portugal, 1986–​2018 131
Figure 10.1 Government composition and duration, average in Portugal and in the
EU (1960–​2020). 153
Figure 12.1 Gallagher’s index of disproportionality for Portugal and OECD
countries (1975–​2019) 183
Figure 12.2 Laakso and Taagepera’s index of effective number of seat-​winning
electoral parties in Portugal and OECD countries (1975–​2019) 184
Figure 12.3 Gallagher’s index of disproportionality for Portugal at the district level
(1976–​2019) 188
Figure 12.4 Laakso and Taagepera’s index of effective number of seat-​winning
electoral parties in Portugal at district level (1976–​2019) 188
Figure 15.1 National identification over time, 2008–​2018 231
Figure 15.2 National pride in different aspects (percentage) 234
Figure 15.3 Pride in the country’s history (percentage) 234
Figure 15.4 Importance of difference aspects for “being truly Portuguese”
(percentage) 236
Figure 15.5 Ethnic and civic dimensions of national identity 237
xxiv   Figures

Figure 16.1 Specific support in Portugal, 2004–​2021 246

Figure 16.2 Control of corruption and corruption as major problem 248
Figure 16.3 Average ideological (left-​right) incongruence between voters and
governments 250
Figure 16.4 Left-​right self-​placement and satisfaction with democracy 251
Figure 16.5 Non-​Electoral political participation in Portugal 252
Figure 16.6 Democratic dissatisfaction and political action 254
Figure 16.7 Rejection of autocracy and its correlates in Portugal 257
Figure 18.1 Determinants of vote choice in the 2019 election. 282
Figure 18.2 António Costa’s rating across regions. 285
Figure 18.3 Nationalization in EU member countries. 286
Figure 19.1 Evolution of electoral turnout in Portugal and a set of European
polities. 294
Figure 19.2 Evolution of electoral turnout measured at the municipal level in three
types of communities: rural, hybrid, and urban areas 297
Figure 23.1 Indicators of party system institutionalization in Portugal 359
Figure 23.2 Effective number of electoral parties in Portugal, over time 360
Figure 23.3 Evolution of party positions on a left-​right scale 361
Figure 23.4 Portuguese party system volatility in comparative perspective 364
Figure 23.5 Portugal’s moderate pluralism in comparative perspective 364
Figure 24.1 Ideological and political congruence in Portugal, 2019 376
Figure 24.2 Portuguese governments pledges fulfilment, 1995–​2019 (percentage) 378
Figure 24.3 Portuguese governments pledges fulfilment by policy area, 1995–​2019
(percentage) 380
Figure 26.1 Percentage of women and men who have worked for a party and have
been members of a trade union (2002–​2018) 409
Figure 26.2 Percentage of women and men who voted in legislative elections
(2002–​2019) 410
Figure 26.3 Percentage of women and men who carried out non-​institutionalized
forms of political participation (2002–​2018) 411
Figure 26.4 Women’s descriptive representation in Portugal in 1975–​2018: A
comparative perspective 413
Figure 26.5 Share of women in parliamentary party delegations by political party in
Portugal, 1975–​2019 414
Figure 28.1 Emigration flows from Portugal between 2000 and 2018 445
Figure 28.2 Portugal’s net migration and unemployment rates between 1998
and 2019 450
Figure 31.1 Mean equivalized disposable income and Gini coefficient (2003–​2018) 489
 Figures   xxv

Figure 31.2 Poverty rate and poverty and social exclusion rate (2003–​2018) 493
Figure 32.1 Non-​health-​related social expenditure 509
Figure 32.2 Collective bargaining and employment protection legislation 511
Figure 32.3 Gross and net social expenditure, as percentage of GDP 514
Figure 32.4 Gross and adjusted public spending (anchored) in new and old
social risks 516
Figure 32.5 Key welfare state outputs, over time 517
Figure 32.6 Poverty, inequality, and social transfers 521
Figure 33.1 Trade union density and collective bargaining coverage in Southern
Europe, 1960–​2018 533
Figure 33.2 Female employment/​population ratio in selected countries, aged 15–​64 536
Figure 33.3 Harmonized unemployment rate in Southern Europe, 1980–​2019 537
Figure 34.1 Real GDP per capita growth rate (%) 544
Figure 34.2 Savings rate, investment rate, and current account (% of GDP) 546
Figure 34.3 Interest rates on long-​term government bonds (%) 547
Figure 34.4 Net lending and public debt (percentage of GDP) (1999–​2020) 549
Figure 35.1 Literacy rate in Southern European countries 558
Figure 35.2 Gross enrolment rate per education level from 1974 to 2018 559
Figure 35.3 Early leavers from education and training in European countries 560
Figure 35.4 Percentage of students in the vocational track in secondary education 564
Figure 35.5 Number of teachers per level of education 566
Figure 35.6 Distribution of teachers per age group per level of education 566
Figure 37.1 Number of convictions for corruption and related criminal offences in
first instance courts (1994–​2018) 592
Figure 38.1 Fiscal decentralization in Europe (2019) 610
Figure 40.1 Relative PPP-​adjusted GDP per capita of Portugal 640
Figure 42.1 Parties’ positioning about the EU, 1999–​2019 671
Figure 42.2 Voting and the EU issue among left-​wing parties 675
Figure 42.3 Voting and the EU issue among right-​wing parties 676
Figure 48.1 Number of active-​duty military personnel in the Portuguese Armed
Forces (2000–​2020) 763
Figure 48.2 Defence expenditure and other public expenditures (million euros) 765
Figure 48.3 Yearly number of international missions of the Portuguese Armed
Forces (1991–​2020) 767
Figure 48.4 Number of military personnel in National Deployed Forces (FND) 768
 Tables

Table 2.1 Electoral results for the Constituent Assembly (25 April 1975) 25
Table 4.1 Annual growth rates of GDP per capita in Portugal and the EU-​15,
1960–​2019 (percentage) 55
Table 4.2 Life expectancy at birth, Portugal and EU-​15 (years), 1960–​2018 66
Table 6.1 Issue dimensions of partisan conflict in the Portuguese party system,
1975–​2021 93
Table 10.1 Portuguese National Executives 151
Table 10.2 Members of the Portuguese executive inner circle, 1976–​2019 156
Table 10.3 Makeup of the Prime Ministers’ cabinet (1974–​2020) 158
Table 10.4 Portuguese centre of government weight in the executive 160
Table 11.1 Judicial Councils in Portugal 169
Table 11.2 Chief Prosecutors, 1977–​2021 170
Table 11.3 Constitutional Judges, 1983-​2021 172
Table 15.1 Predictors of national identification 232
Table 18.1 Relative importance of elections (percentage). 285
Table 18.A1 Multinomial logit models of vote choice in the 2019 election in Portugal. 290
Table 19.1 Relationship between vote shares and voter turnout 302
Table 21.1 Candidate selection in Portugal (as per statutes) 331
Table 22.1 Selected prime minister characteristics, 1976–​2019 343
Table 22.2 Sociodemographic characteristics of ministers and junior ministers 346
Table 22.3 Political background of ministers and junior ministers 347
Table 22.4 Politicians vs. experts: comparing selected characteristics (percentage) 348
Table 25.1 Party laws: main dispositions 393
Table 25.2 Party funding regulation for parliamentary elections: main dispositions 398
Table 27.1 Evolution of unionization in Portugal, 1980–​2015 429
Table 27.2 Employer confederations: membership, European affiliations, and
internal rules 431
Table 27.3 Activities of economic interest groups: Survey results 435
Table 28.1 Cycles of emigration from Portugal 441
Table 28.2 Cycles of immigration into Portugal 447
Table 31.1 Equivalent income inequality measures 490
xxviii   Tables

Table 31.2 Income and expenditure inequality 491

Table 31.3 Earnings inequality measures 491
Table 31.4 Household net wealth inequality measures 492
Table 31.5 Equivalent income poverty measures 494
Table 31.6 Severe material deprivation rate 495
Table 31.7 Inequality by level of education of the reference person 496
Table 31.8 Inequality and social perceptions: 498
Table 31.9 Inequality reduction 500
Table 31.10 Poverty reduction 500
Table 37.1 Legislative initiatives and bills approved on anti-​corruption and ethics
regulation 598
Table 39.1 Share of main trade partners of goods 620
 Section I

PA ST A N D P R E SE N T
 Chapter 1

F rom Proble mat i c

L agg ard to Sta r of t h e
Sou th? The C ompa rat i v e
Significanc e of t h e
P ortugue se C ase
Robert M. Fishman

1.1 Introduction: The Theoretical

Significance of the Portuguese Case
for Comparative Politics

The significance of the Portuguese case for comparative political analysis and theory
building is an underdeveloped theme in the global study of comparative politics and also
in much of the scholarship empirically focused on Portugal. However, there is ample the-
oretical and conceptual benefit to be derived from specifying and elaborating that signifi-
cance. Growing evidence suggests that this national case has become unusually successful
in a variety of ways that can potentially shed light on causal processes of wide scholarly
relevance. Although Portugal was often seen as a problematic case from the standpoint of
many objectives or standards emphasized in comparative work on political development,
the country’s importance in modern world history, from the age of early modern European
exploration onward, has been far greater than its current demographic weight.
This chapter suggests that this national case is arguably even more relevant for the pur-
pose of comparative political analysis and theory building. Recent examples of Portugal’s
success in education, certain cultural outcomes, employment, poverty reduction, rela-
tive party-​system stability, satisfaction with democracy, and a variety of other outcomes
have raised the question of why this case has become more successful than other Southern
European countries according to a variety of seemingly unconnected yet important
indicators. These recent successes are especially noteworthy given the country’s prior
4   Robert M. Fishman

record of relative backwardness, at least for Europe. This chapter identifies points of polit-
ical analysis according to which the Portuguese case holds particular comparative import-
ance and reviews theoretical hypotheses that are potentially and broadly useful, not only
for explaining this unusual performance record, but also for accounting for outcomes in
many other national cases. The chapter also considers alternative designs—​or frames of
reference—​that have been used to compare the case with others to promote empirical and
theoretical understanding.
The Portuguese case can be compared to other political systems on the basis of institu-
tional design—​focusing, for example, on the country’s semi-​presidential system (Neto
and Costa Lobo, 2009; Costa Pinto and Freire, 2010)—​or in other ways, focusing either
on questions related to historical trajectories or on ‘outcome variables’ of various types,
including indicators of democratic consolidation and party system evolution. Many of these
themes are addressed elsewhere in this volume. This chapter takes up these concerns and
focuses primarily on ways in which historical and institutional differences may account for
contrasts between this and other national cases on meaningful political and social outcomes.
This approach offers the greatest promise for elucidating the theoretical significance of
Portuguese politics in the study of comparative politics.

1.2 Portugal’s Transformation After

Initiating the Worldwide Third Wave of
Democratization in 1974

Portugal’s status as the pioneer of the worldwide Third Wave of democratization in April 1974
(Schmitter, 1975; O’Donnell, Schmitter, and Whitehead, 1986; Huntington, 1991) marked
a clear break in the country’s political development, but the pre-​democratization past has
continued to exert its influence in various ways. Both pre-​democratization legacies and the
effects of democratization have contributed to shaping recent outcomes and patterns in
ways that scholars have attempted to delineate. This chapter focuses initially on this most
recent legacy, given its watershed significance for Portugal and much of the world. A major
reason for this focus is that certain elements of Portugal’s pathway to democracy may help to
account for the country’s recent success.
Following Portugal’s historically unusual social revolutionary pathway to democracy,
beginning on 25 April 1974 (Bermeo, 1986; Hammond, 1988; Fishman, 1990; Maxwell,
1995; Durán Muñoz, 2000; Ramos Pinto, 2013), many of the socio-​political analyses ini-
tially focused either on political challenges related to certain aspects of that revolutionary
pathway (Linz, 1977; Manuel, 1995; Linz and Stepan, 1996), or on ways in which Portugal
could be seen as a developmental laggard, perceived as problematic when compared
to other West European countries. Literacy, per capita income, and newspaper reader-
ship were but some of the indicators that initially fit that approach, with its emphasis
on developmental shortfalls, especially from the standpoint of comparisons with other
European cases. However, with the functioning of the institutions and political culture
put in place by the 1974 Carnation Revolution and its aftermath, Portugal achieved re-
markable progress on many dimensions of performance, and is increasingly recognized
 From Problematic Laggard to Star of the South?     5

as an unusually successful case. The available data show much evidence of rapid develop-
mental progress during the final quarter of the twentieth century, even before the emer-
gence, in the twenty-​first century, of several recent examples of pattern-​breaking success
(Barreto et al., 2000).
According to a number of indicators, during the early twenty-​first century, Portuguese
performance has surpassed that of previously more advanced countries in Southern Europe,
raising the question of how and why this is possible. Educational achievement at high
school level, as measured by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD)’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study in 2018; satisfac-
tion with democracy, as captured by Eurobarometer data (after 2015); the poverty rate after
social transfers, especially after the beginning of the Great Recession; the unemployment
rate and the capacity of the existing party system to survive the Great Recession: these are
but some of the indicators according to which Portugal has come to be the most successful
case in Southern Europe (Fishman, 2019), at least based on the latest available data, prior
to the coronavirus crisis of 2020–​2021. After having registered relatively high levels of in-
equality, partly as a result of the long shadow cast by the historically delayed introduction of
universal access to education (as recently as the 1950s), Portugal began to make rapid pro-
gress in dealing with inequality shortly before the Great Recession, and has continued since
as well. On some indicators, such as the participation of women in the labour force and cer-
tain types of cultural tastes, Portuguese data has come closer to the levels found in Northern
Europe than the ones of the rest of Southern Europe (Fishman, 2010; Fishman and Lizardo,
2013). This chapter examines several hypotheses that can potentially explain this recent
record of success, and offers important conceptual and theoretical lessons that extend well
beyond this case. Alternative explanations rooted in institutional structure, pre-​1974 history,
and coalitional arrangements are addressed along with the theoretical hypothesis that cul-
tural legacies of the Carnation Revolution can largely account for the country’s distinctive
recent achievements. Implications are drawn out for comparative work with other cases and
for new research on the Portuguese case.
The Carnation Revolution, that took place on 25 April 1974, marked an obvious watershed
moment in Portugal’s political trajectory, ending decades of authoritarian rule and initiating
a complex and historically unusual pathway to democracy. The social, economic and socio-​
cultural dynamics of the post-​revolutionary period have been amply addressed by a great
deal of scholarship, but the more strictly political elements of the country’s revolutionary
transformation have also received a great deal of attention, with analyses focusing on dis-
tinctive political challenges of a transition marked by widespread purges (Costa Pinto, 2001,
2006) and the temporary ascendancy of political forces on the revolutionary left that sought
alternatives to liberal democracy. The distinctive political challenges of a transition carried
out under such circumstances have attracted a good deal of scholarly interest (Linz, 1977;
Manuel, 1995; Linz and Stepan, 1996), some of it conceptualizing Portugal’s revolutionary
path to democracy as potentially problematic. However, with the 1976 approval of a new
constitution drafted by the assembly elected in 1975, the distinctive Portuguese institu-
tional model was in place, at least in its initial form. Portugal quickly became a consolidated
democracy, having attained that status via a historically unusual pathway. The country
had approved the most socially minded democratic constitution in the democratic world
(Magalhães, 2013; Vieira and da Silva, 2010), and built new institutions under the initial im-
pact of substantial social pressure. The earliest version of the constitution, drafted in the
6   Robert M. Fishman

midst of revolutionary mobilizations in the streets, simultaneously guaranteed the standard

liberal political freedoms of representative democracy and the forging of a socialist economic
model emphasizing state ownership of much of the economy. This commitment followed
widespread nationalizations carried out during the height of the revolution and prior to the
enactment of the new constitution. In a 1989 revision, the socialist component of that initial
model was removed from the constitutional text, but a number of social guarantees that ex-
tend beyond the norm found in most other democracies remained in place, making Portugal
an unusual case of foundational fusion between social and liberal conceptions of democracy.
The 1989 constitutional revision can be seen as a crucial watershed development, of sig-
nificance for both the empirical outcomes and analytical categories of interest to compara-
tive political science. With the re-​privatization of a large sector of the economy that had
been nationalized during the revolutionary period initiated on 25 April 1974, and the elimin-
ation, in 1989, of the constitution’s commitment to the construction of socialism, the social
principles that predominated in post-​1974 Portugal came to find their expression in the same
institutional terrain and policy arenas as in much of the rest of the democratic world: the
welfare state and a wide range of closely associated redistributive measures. The theoretical
claim that, during the first years after the revolution, the Portuguese state was not strictly
speaking a capitalist state (De Sousa Santos, 1990) made sense until the 1989 revision, but
that transformation of the constitutional text altered the country’s political dynamic. The
social agenda of the Carnation Revolution was in essence transposed from the arena of en-
terprise ownership to the terrain of welfare state construction, initiating a period of sub-
stantial growth in welfare state and redistributive policies. Significantly, this new pathway
elicited support not only from the left but also from crucial elements of the country’s centre-​
right (Fishman, 2010, 2019). This new developmental tendency has reshaped a number of
outcomes of interest to comparative analysis, leading a surprisingly long series of variables
in the direction of (without fully attaining) outcomes found in Northern Europe. This ten-
dency, and the accompanying divergence from other Southern European cases on some
matters, has been especially noteworthy given Portugal’s relatively backward point of de-
parture at the time of the Carnation Revolution. Despite the fact that the country’s institu-
tional and structural conditions are, for the most part, quite different from those that have
characterized successful social democratic welfare states elsewhere (Esping-​Andersen,
1990, 1999), redistributive measures have reduced the post-​transfer poverty rate and other
measures of inequality.
The chronological pattern of this development is also of interest. As early work by Esping-​
Andersen (1994) showed, the initial impact of revolutionary democratization on welfare
state expansion in the 1970s was greater in the Portuguese case than the impact of reform-​
oriented regime transition in Spain just 2 years later. In a related vein, the available data show
an abrupt and strong upward movement in the incorporation of women into the labour force
in the immediate aftermath of the Carnation Revolution (Fishman, 2010, 2019). Even before
the 1974 revolution, the participation of women in the labour force had been increasing slowly
during the colonial wars that were being fought in Africa, but the large jump experienced by
the country on this indicator—​placing Portugal well outside the Southern European pattern,
with a level of participation by women in the workforce above the average for Europe as
a whole—​is only patent in data collected after 25 April 1974. However, continuing welfare
state development after that initial upsurge noted by Esping-​Andersen proceeded rela-
tively slowly until the 1989 constitutional revision. Various outcomes that follow the logic
 From Problematic Laggard to Star of the South?     7

of divergence from much of Southern Europe have developed over time, in some instances
especially after 1989, as in the case of incremental welfare state development. The disparate
list of outcomes that fit the pattern of divergence from Southern Europe includes ‘omniv-
orous’ (which is to say varied and pluralistic) cultural tastes in music (Fishman and Lizardo,
2013), educational test outcomes as measured by PISA studies—​especially the 2018 study
that strongly confirmed Portugal’s leading position in Southern European education, aggre-
gate levels of employment (Esping-​Andersen, 2000), and policies incorporating immigrants
as captured by Migrant Integration Policy Index (MIPEX) data. Crucially, after 2015, levels
of satisfaction with democracy as operationalized by the Eurobarometer have proved sig-
nificantly higher than those of the rest of Southern Europe. Relative party system stability
after the Great Recession can be seen as an element, among others, in that long list, despite
the more recent upsurge of the country’s anti-​immigrant far-​right. Whether this post-​2015
pattern will remain in place after the COVID-​19 crisis will surely be an interesting theme for
future work.
This pattern clearly raises the relevance of the Portuguese case for comparative political
analysis, posing the question of what causal pathways, other than those found in Northern
Europe, can lead to such outcomes. Clearly, the primary structural determinants and his-
torical trajectories of relevance for the success of social democratic objectives in Northern
Europe are not present in Portugal. The resulting puzzle heightens the potential usefulness
of the Portuguese case for comparative analysis. As already suggested, one obvious macro-​
level explanation concerns the legacies of the country’s revolutionary pathway to democracy
in the 1970s. However, even if one adopts this approach, it still leaves open the question of
the precise mechanism or mechanisms that can account for this effect. Scholarly analyses
have pointed to a long list of possible explanations, including the impact of the revolution on
civil society organizations (Fernandes, 2015), associated configurations of power resources
and political coalitions (Fernandes, 2017), and cultural legacies of the revolution (Fishman,
2011, 2019) with potentially quite wide significance (Fishman and Villaverde Cabral, 2016).
Important survey research on memories of the Carnation Revolution (Costa Lobo, Costa
Pinto, and Magalhães, 2016), as well as work on social movement protest (Baumgarten, 2017),
seem to offer support for the culturally oriented perspective on legacies of the revolution.
The main analytic thrust of the culturally oriented hypothesis emphasizes the causal impact
of understandings of democracy and related forms of practice believed to have emerged
initially in the context of revolution (Fishman, 2011, 2019). According to this approach, the
country’s politics have been shaped by a distinctively post-​revolutionary form of democratic
practice that has favoured social inclusion. This clearly suggests the relevance of collective
memories of the revolution for the case-​oriented scholarship (Loff, 2014).
Other hypotheses linked to possible enduring effects of the Carnation Revolution also
deserve the attention of ongoing research and analysis. The large-​scale purges of the revo-
lutionary period (Costa Pinto, 2001, 2006) exerted some influence on the composition
or mindset of the post-​transition elite, despite the reintegration of many of those initially
purged. The party system that initially emerged in a period of revolution has been the sub-
ject of important literature and is of obvious ongoing significance (Jalali, 2007; Lisi, 2015).
One comparative hypothesis locates in the party system a basis for institutional dynamics
that, it is theorized, have led to divergences with neighbouring Spain (Watson, 2015); how-
ever, the direction of divergence hypothesized is the reverse of that asserted in much other
research.
8   Robert M. Fishman

The scholarly effort to attribute Portuguese successes—​and the pattern of divergence from
Southern Europe according to some indicators—​to positive legacies of the polity’s revolu-
tionary beginnings confronts several possible objections. Some of those objections con-
cern continuing indicators of relative backwardness or of significant inequality, at least until
recently, but such indicators—​influenced by the country’s historically late introduction of
universal access to education in the 1950s (Candeia et al., 2007)—​stood out more strongly
in 1974 than in more recent examinations of social indicators which show much evidence
of convergence with European averages (Barreto et al., 2000). As a result of Portugal’s late
introduction of universal education during the Estado Novo, the rapid growth of access to
education, especially after 1974, initially generated an intergenerational pattern of inequality,
rather than enhancing equality. It was only the combination of enhanced educational access
and generational replacement that ultimately made it possible to overcome this historical
impediment to social equality.
Other problematic indicators involve quite real political concerns such as major instances
of corruption and an emerging pattern of relatively low electoral participation. The decline
in political participation, especially in electoral turnout, has been quite steep after the very
high level of electoral mobilization observed during the first years of Portuguese democracy,
in the context of revolution and its immediate aftermath. This empirical reality points to a
major theoretical issue: democratic theorists disagree over the significance to be placed on
electoral participation when evaluating democratic quality. Some analysts see heightened
levels of voting participation as reflective of either polarization or clientelism—​and thus
as markers of a lack of democratic quality, precisely the reverse of what is often assumed
(Fishman, 2016: 300). However, this indicator clearly deserves attention, and may be a basis
for concern. A potentially related issue is the Portuguese people’s growing predisposition
to relying on a strong leader to resolve difficult matters. This tendency, also observed in
some other contemporary democracies, is addressed in Chapter 16 of the present volume
by Pedro Magalhães. Both of these points raise possible objections to the narrative of rela-
tive Portuguese success emphasized here. One additional potential concern involves
comparisons drawn with the most successful post-​communist systems, such as Slovenia and
the Czech Republic. The successes of those countries in both gross domestic product (GDP)
performance and the decrease of inequality deserve comparative attention, but the large
contrasts in circumstances and conditioning factors between the post-​communist world
and the Southern European countries that experienced right-​wing dictatorships remain
decisively important. When compared with the other Southern European cases, Portugal
continues to stand out as an example of surprising success and that distinction calls out for
theoretical explanation.
A fundamentally different approach has been to search for elements of alleged Portuguese
‘essentialism’, or relatively unchanging tendencies. Clearly, if the major determinants of the
country’s political life are embedded in relatively unchanging elements of ‘essentialism’, the
legacies of a recent revolution would recede in explanatory significance. The much-​contested
approach by Wiarda (1989) argued the existence in both Portugal and Spain of a centuries-​
old tendency towards corporatist understandings of politics and society, a tendency that
Wiarda saw as reaffirmed in the aftermath of the political transitions of the 1970s. Most
scholars found it difficult to view this perspective as an explanation for episodes of major dis-
continuity and conflict in these neighbouring political systems, or for their growing diver-
gence after the 1970s. A more optimistically oriented approach to the search for essentialist
 From Problematic Laggard to Star of the South?     9

tendencies in Portuguese politics is found in the stimulating analysis by Martin Page (2002),
who sees a longstanding tendency towards multicultural inclusion and tolerance in the
country’s history. Despite the appeal of this view, the difficulty it encounters when analyt-
ically handling episodes of significant discontinuity and division raises questions about its
explanatory reach. But perhaps the greatest scholarly challenge to efforts to attribute recent
outcomes to positive legacies of Portugal’s unusual pathway to democracy involves the un-
deniable need to examine and weigh multiple historical legacies—​including those that ex-
tend further backward than the Carnation Revolution of 1974.

1.3 Multiple Legacies of the

Past: Disentangling Contradictory Dynamics

When we turn to an examination of how Portugal’s multiple historical legacies have impacted
the country’s politics, two obvious scholarly imperatives deserve attention: firstly, to identify
the historical experiences most likely to have generated politically relevant legacies, and sec-
ondly, to analytically disentangle those effects from one another when explaining current
empirical realities. The list of major historical experiences that may hypothetically have left
significant legacies in their wake is obviously a long one. Among the large themes meriting
consideration, four stand out strongly: 1) the enduring consequences of Portugal’s key role
in early-​modern worldwide exploration and global colonialism; 2) the lasting effects of
the country’s historical underdevelopment based on European standards; 3) the persistent
consequences of nearly four decades of authoritarian rule during the twentieth century;
4) the ongoing impact of the country’s historically unusual revolutionary pathway to democ-
racy in the 1970s. All four of these large-​scale historical experiences seem to have generated
legacies of significance. But what form have those legacies taken, how have they interacted
with one another, and is it possible that, to some degree, they may have exerted opposing
effects on political outcomes—​thereby masking some of the causal dynamics?
All of these legacies are worthy of study. Many examples of literature in political science
have focused their attention on legacies of colonial rule in once-​colonized countries, but the
reverse causal dynamic—​that of the impact of exploration and colonization on the colonial
powers—​obviously deserves being studied as well. Both colonization and the decline and fall
of colonial empires have attracted the attention of historians, and, in the Portuguese case,
those dynamics quite obviously contributed strongly to the developments within the armed
forces that led to the captains’ rebellion in April 1974, initiating the Carnation Revolution
(Bermeo, 2007). Additionally, in a highly pervasive way that shapes both demographics and
elements of contemporary culture, the country’s centuries-​long contact with all inhabited
continents—​due largely to Portugal’s prominent role in early patterns of exploration, con-
quest, and commerce—​has clearly exerted an impact on multiple aspects of the country’s
demography and its socio-​political life. The fact that fewer than 5 per cent of worldwide
native speakers of Portuguese reside in Portugal is itself reflective of this underlying reality.
However, this undeniable if somewhat diffuse historical factor is more difficult for polit-
ical scientists to study and assess directly than in the case of more recent political factors,
such as the twin legacies of the authoritarian Estado Novo and the revolutionary transition
10   Robert M. Fishman

to democracy in the 1970s. However, one promising approach allows empirically oriented
social scientists to analytically separate the hypothesized effects of these distinctive legacies.
Cohort analysis, as several studies have shown (Fishman and Lizardo, 2013; Fishman and
Villaverde Cabral, 2016), makes it possible to ascertain whether general tendencies in the
Portuguese population are found throughout the country’s age distribution or, alternatively,
are concentrated in age cohorts that experienced one of these historical experiences more
powerfully and directly than other age cohorts. From this standpoint, legacies of Portugal’s
centuries-​old history of exploration and colonization, if they are indeed the most powerful
mark of the past in contemporary Portugal, should in principle be expected to impact the en-
tire spectrum of age groups. This would generate little if any difference between age cohorts.
Legacies of underdevelopment should be manifested in older age cohorts more strongly
than in younger cohorts. Legacies of the authoritarian Estado Novo period, with its complex
history of repression and of its largely unsuccessful efforts at internal reform (Costa Pinto,
1996; Fernandes, 2006), should also be expected to impact older cohorts more strongly than
younger ones, albeit with a clear demarcation line in 1974. Direct legacies of the Carnation
Revolution should influence most strongly those who actually participated in it. And the
impact of institutional or cultural practices put in place by the revolution, as is hypothesized
in one argument on legacies of the revolutionary pathway to democracy, ought to affect
most strongly those born or at least socialized under democracy. In a sense, each hypoth-
esis suggests the likelihood of a distinctive age profile in matters shaped by the hypothesized
legacy effect. The scholarship on Portuguese youth (Machado Pais, 1999) and other cohort-​
oriented work contributes to pushing forward the analytical basis for differentiating between
hypothesized historical legacies.
From another scholarly perspective, the important issue of how to differentiate and
isolate the distinct effects of Portugal’s multiple historical legacies can only be adequately
resolved through macro-​historical analysis of the type practiced by a distinguished
tradition of political scientists and sociologists (Linz, 1975; Linz and Stepan, 1978, 1996;
Skocpol, 1979; Brady and Collier, 2010). In this research tradition, it is the large-​scale
pattern of historical dynamics and outcomes that constitutes the empirical evidence of
crucial relevance for evaluating alternative hypotheses—​such as those that argue for the
causal significance of one or another legacy from the past. Discontinuities and episodes
of significant conflict in the country’s political history can be taken as evidence against
any sort of ‘blanket effect’ of the distant past that envelopes all of the national experi-
ence. An important analytical tool in this tradition concerns the search for actual causal
processes and mechanisms in the substance of macro-​history (Brady and Collier, 2010),
a clear argument for macrolevel analysis. Both cohort analysis and macrolevel historical
analysis have proved valuable in work concerning the enduring political significance
of Portugal’s multiple historical legacies. Although all four legacies are unquestionably
quite real, the weight of recent evidence has tended to provide support for arguments
that emphasize the explanatory importance of legacies of the country’s revolutionary
path to democracy. Future work will shape how the field evaluates this theoretical claim
and its explanatory significance for broadly comparative political science focused on a
large universe of cases. Even though the potential universe of relevance for theoretical
claims initially formulated for the Portuguese case is quite wide, analysts of Portugal
still face the question of which cases the country can be usefully compared with, and
this is the question that we will now address.
 From Problematic Laggard to Star of the South?     11

1.4 The Comparative Universe for Analysing

Portugal’s Politics: Alternative Frameworks

Scholarly analyses of Portuguese politics have chosen alternative ‘universes’ of cases

assumed to be relevant for drawing into view scientifically interesting elements of variation,
success, and failure in Portugal’s political trajectory. Much of the work has chosen to examine
Portuguese politics alongside the experience of three other Southern European cases, Italy,
Greece, and Spain (Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle, 1995; Morlino, 1998), or a somewhat
longer list of countries at the periphery of Europe (Della Porta et al., 2017). This approach
seeks to gain useful leverage from the juxtaposition between similarities and differences in
the trajectories of the four cases. Certain elements of historical parallelism and structural
similarity among these four cases, along with various points of cross-​case variation, have
enhanced scholarly interest in this comparative framework. Some work has opted to em-
phasize the more focused ‘paired comparison’ (Tarrow, 2010) between Portugal and Spain,
choosing to further restrict the universe of focused comparison for both analytical and
empirical reasons. In many ways, the two Iberian Peninsula cases have been more tightly
interrelated and more similar than the broader group of four Southern European countries,
but the divergence between the Iberian Peninsula neighbours in the 1970s, in terms of their
polar opposite pathways to democracy, has introduced an analytically interesting element of
sharp contrast emphasized in much scholarly work. While it has been proposed that the two
cases share an essentialist Iberian past of presumed enduring significance (Wiarda, 1989),
the overwhelmingly predominant emphasis in scholarship has focused on a long list of cross-​
case differences between this pairing of neighbouring countries (Linz, 1977; Durán Muñoz,
2000; Royo, 2002; Magalhães, 2003; Royo and Manuel, 2003; Montero, Calvo, and Martínez,
2008; Gómez Fortes, 2009; Torcal, 2014; Fernandes, 2015; Watson, 2015; Fishman, 2019).
From a methodological standpoint, much of the comparative work on Portugal and Spain
takes this pairing as a natural experiment—​or at least as a strategic comparison offering
some features of that desired design. Scholars adopting this perspective have seen an oppor-
tunity in the two-​case pairing to assess an analytical question that has long been of interest
to comparative political scientists, namely whether divergent pathways from dictatorship to
democracy carry with them distinctive consequences for the pattern of political life under
democracy (Stepan, 1986). That issue is taken up in literature discussed in this chapter and
elsewhere in this volume. However, broader international frames of comparison continue
to hold great value for the study of Portugal. The country’s relative historic backwardness
according to European standards, at least until the mid-​1970s, provides one standpoint
for such comparisons, whereas this national case’s outsized role in the European explor-
ation and colonization of the globe presents another standpoint for drawing comparative
observations and questions, as suggested in this chapter’s discussion of multiple historical
legacies. Comparisons with other Lusophone countries, a universe united by language and
history, can also be useful (Cabral, 2003). More broadly, some authors have helpfully placed
the Portuguese case within the larger universe of the two Iberian Peninsula countries and
the set of all of their former colonies in Latin America (Huber and Stephens, 2012). Shifting
the comparative focus in another direction, broad comparisons between all European Union
(EU) member states are common and prove useful (Cabral, 2006) for at least two large-​scale
12   Robert M. Fishman

reasons: firstly, the existence of a shared institutional framework embedded in the EU’s
binding arrangements and incentive structure; and secondly, the availability of a great deal
of comparable data for all member states. These alternative frameworks for comparison are
not mutually exclusive and have all contributed some useful questions and findings.

1.5 In Conclusion: Elaborating

the Theoretical Significance of this
National Case

From the perspective of some comparative political scientists, the only scientific value added
by the Portuguese case lies in the contribution of the country’s data to broad cross-​national
comparisons, but this chapter argues otherwise: that systematic features of Portugal’s pol-
itical experience—​along with empirical puzzles tied to that experience, and scholarly
explanations offered for them—​are of considerable theoretical usefulness for cross-​case
comparisons. Early work on the political demise of democracy in Portugal’s first republic,
during the early twentieth century (Schwartzman, 1989; Wheeler, 1999), for example, has
contributed not only to the study of Portugal, but also to broadly comparative work on
democratic breakdowns. The important body of work on Portugal by comparative theorist
Philippe Schmitter (1999) has consistently made widely applicable conceptual contributions.
Some work on this national case has provided evidence of major puzzles, such as the fact that
distributional outcomes in Portugal during the Great Recession and its aftermath were at
least marginally more favourable to egalitarian principles than in other Southern European
cases, even under centre-​right rule (Matsaganis and Leventi, 2014; Pérez and Matsaganis,
2018). Parallel to this finding, earlier survey research showed that public sentiment in fa-
vour of redistributive state policies has been more predominant in Portugal than in other
European cases (Villaverde Cabral, Vala, and Freire, 2003). There are powerful reasons to
believe that analyses of Portugal can offer comparative political science a conceptual under-
standing of important empirical puzzles and explanatory approaches of potentially wide-​
ranging significance.
Simply from the standpoint of empirically observed patterns, Portugal offers the conun-
drum of how a relatively backward and unsuccessful case—​if one assesses the country’s past
record in terms of routine measures of socio-​political success and aspiration—​became a star
of the South, displaying a better performance according to many indicators than countries
that were previously more advanced. In a similar vein, the country’s experience raises the
question of how a country lacking the determinants of social democratic success found in
much of Northern Europe could attain similar outcomes through a trajectory of develop-
ment that largely lacks those determinants. These two large empirical puzzles point suggest-
ively towards types of analyses that may indeed prove broadly applicable to other cases.
One approach that focuses on explaining these and other related conundrums is the
‘democratic practice’ argument on cultural legacies of the country’s revolutionary path to
democracy. This theoretical approach asserts that an inclusionary way of understanding and
‘doing’ democratic politics that emerged during the Carnation Revolution has remained
 From Problematic Laggard to Star of the South?     13

in place, shaping ongoing interactions between protest movements and political power
(Fishman and Everson, 2016) along with a wide range of other elements of political life and
numerous significant outcomes (Fishman, 2019). Potentially, this approach might offer the-
oretical implications not only for understanding post-​revolutionary polities, but also for
conceptualizing historically rooted cultural determinants of political conduct that produce
a range of impacts even broader than those of ‘informal institutions’ with clear enforce-
ment mechanisms (Helmke and Levitsky, 2006). If the development of the field and future
research support this argument, the potential relevance for broadly comparative analysis
would extend quite widely. However, various alternative perspectives have also attracted
support and interest that will continue to motivate debate and ongoing research. The role
played by organizationally based power resources and political coalitions is one such alter-
native (Fernandes, 2017). Another historically rooted hypothesis of potential explanatory
usefulness concerns the lasting impact of the transition-​era political purges which were
quite massive in the Portuguese case (Costa Pinto, 2001, 2006). Institutionally focused
arguments that centre on the party system or other institutional configurations also con-
tinue to attract significant interest and will surely motivate much new research. Other
researchers will likely find evidence of failures and shortfalls in this national case, perhaps
calling into question this narrative of relative success. But in all such work and the debates
that it nourishes, the key point is that the evolution of future scholarship on Portugal will be
increasingly interwoven with broad efforts at cross-​case theorization. The Portuguese case is
every bit as relevant for wide-​scale theoretical endeavours as the small countries of Northern
Europe that have served as the empirical focal point for highly influential theoretical claims
on welfare states and power resources (Esping-​Andersen, 1999; Huber and Stephens, 2012).
Although Portugal is a small country, its theoretical significance for comparative politics is
quite large.

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The introduction into Italy of the art of printing was due to Juan
Turrecremata, who was Abbot of the monastery of Subiaco, and who
later became Cardinal. He was a native of Valladolid in Spain, and
his family name was Torquemada, of which name Turrecremata is
the Latinised form. The Cardinal has been confused by
Frommann[447] with the Torquemada who was Inquisitor-General of
the Inquisition during the period of its most pitiless activity. The latter
probably belonged to the same family, but his Christian name was
Tomas, and he was not born till 1420, thirty years later than the
Cardinal. Juan Torquemada had, however, been one of the
confessors of Queen Isabella, and was said to have made to her the
first suggestion of the necessity of establishing the Inquisition, in
order to check the rising spirit of heresy. He did not realise what a
Trojan horse, full of heretical possibilities, he was introducing into
Italy in bringing in the Germans and their printing-press.
The monastery of Subiaco was some sixty miles from Rome.
Among its monks were, in 1464, a number of Germans, some of
whom had, before leaving Germany, seen or heard enough of the
work done by the printers in Mayence or Frankfort to be able to give
to the Abbot an idea of its character. The Abbot was keenly
interested in the possibilities presented by the new art, and with the
aid of these German monks he arranged to bring to Subiaco two
printers, Conrad Schweinheim, of Mayence, and Arnold Pannartz, of
Prague, who were instructed to organise a printing-office in the
monastery. They began their operations early in 1464, their first work
being given to the printing in sheet form of the manuals of worship or
liturgies used in the monastery.
In 1465, they published the first volume printed in Italy, an edition
of a Latin syntax for boys, edited by Lactantius. This was followed in
the latter part of the same year by an edition of Cicero’s De Oratore,
and in 1467, by the De Civitate of Augustine.
It was only the enthusiasm of the Abbot that rendered it possible,
even for a short period, to overcome the many obstacles in the way
of carrying on a printing-office in an out of the way village like
Subiaco. But the difficulties soon became too great, and in 1467, the
two German printers found their way, under the invitation of the
brothers Massimi, to Rome, where they set up their presses in the
Massimi palace. There they carried on operations for five years,
during which time they produced a stately series of editions of the
Latin classics, including the works of Cicero, Apuleius, Gellius,
Cæsar, Virgil, Livy, Strabo, Lucan, Pliny, Suetonius, Quintilian, Ovid,
together with editions of certain of the Church Fathers, such as
Augustine, Jerome, and Cyprian. They also published a Latin Bible,
and the Bible commentaries of Nicholas de Lyra, in five volumes.
With the production of the last work, the resources which had been
placed at their disposal by their friends the Massimis and by another
patron, Bussi, Bishop of Aleria, were exhausted. The Bishop
addressed an appeal to the Pope on their behalf, setting forth the
importance of their work for the “service of literature and of the
Church.” Sixtus IV., who had just succeeded to the papacy, while
apparently not affected by the dread which influenced future popes
concerning the pernicious influence of the printing-press, evidently
did not share in the enthusiasm of the Bishop as to its present value
for the Church. He was also somewhat avaricious and preferred to
use his money to provide for a large circle of relatives rather than to
support a publishing business. The printers were, therefore, unable
to secure any aid from the papal treasury, and, in 1472, they brought
their business to a close. Schweinheim transferred his activities to
the work of engraving on copper, while concerning the further
undertakings of Pannartz there is no record.
During the seven years of their operations in Subiaco and in
Rome, these two printers, who constituted the first firm of publishers
in Italy, had printed twenty-nine separate works, comprised in thirty-
six volumes. The editions averaged 275 copies of each volume, the
total output aggregating about 12,500 volumes. There is no record of
any attempt being made to secure for this first list of publications the
protection of privileges, and there could in fact have been at the time
no competition to fear.
Shortly after the cessation of Schweinheim’s business,
Turrecremata became a cardinal, and he immediately invited another
German printer, Ulrich Hahn, from Ingolstadt, to settle in Rome.
Hahn’s first publications were the Meditationes of the Cardinal
himself, and these were followed by a number of editions of the Latin
classics. The learned Campanus, Bishop of Teramo, was one of
Hahn’s patrons and gave also valuable service as a press-corrector,
working so diligently that at one time he reserved for himself only
three hours’ sleep. The Bishop writes with great enthusiasm to a
friend concerning the art of printing, “by means of which material
which required a year for its writing could be printed off ready for the
reader in one day.”
Other German printers followed Hahn, and before the close of the
century more than twenty had carried on work in Rome with varying
success. The influence of the Church was at this time decidedly
favourable to the new art, and nearly all the Roman printers of the
earlier group were working at the instance of ecclesiastics, and often
with the direct support of ecclesiastical funds. It is to the Church of
Rome, therefore, that belongs the responsibility for the introduction
into Italy of the printing-press, the work of which was later to give to
the Church so much trouble. The little town of Subiaco can, as the
record shows, claim the credit of the first printing, while it was in
Rome that the first publications of importance were produced.
The leading place, however, in the production of books was almost
from the outset taken by the printers of Venice, and as well for the
excellence of their typography as by reason of the scholarly
importance of the publications themselves, the Venetian printers
maintained for many years a pre-eminence not only in Italy but in
Europe. The distinctive prestige secured by Venice came through the
printing of Greek texts, the beginnings of which, under the direction
of Aldus Manutius, will be referred to later.
Venice.—The first book printed in Venice was the famous
Decor Puellarum, a treatise of instruction for young girls as to the
ruling of their lives. Its date has been claimed by Venetians to be
1461, but it appears from the judgment of the best authorities that
this date must have been erroneous and that the volume really
appeared in 1471. The printer of the Decor Puellarum was Jenson, a
Frenchman, and the contest for priority in Italian publishing has
rested between him and the two Germans of Subiaco.
 Another printer whose first Italian volume, Epistolæ Familiares,
appeared in Venice in 1470, was also a German, John of Speyer. A
fourth volume in this earlier group of publications bore the title
Miracoli della Gloriosa Verzine. This was the only one of the four
which was printed by an Italian, Lavagna of Milan, while it was also
the only early printed book in the Italian language.
In the year 1493, the earliest official document relating to the
printing-press in Venice was published by the Abbate Jacopo Morelli,
prefect of the Marcian Library. That document is an order of the
Collegio or cabinet of Venice, dated September 18, 1469. The order
was proposed by the Doge’s councillors, and grants to John of
Speyer, for a period of five years, the monopoly of printing in Venice
and in the territory controlled by Venice. John did not long enjoy the
advantages of this monopoly, having died in 1470, but the business
was continued by his brother Windelin, to whom, apparently, was
conceded the continuance of the monopoly.
John of Speyer was one of the few of the earlier printers who left
information concerning the size of their editions. If he had also
thought it important to specify the price at which the books were
sold, we should have had data for calculations concerning the
relative profit from the different works.
Of the Epistolæ Familiares, the first edition comprised but one
hundred copies, but the demand must have been greater than had
been calculated for, as four months later the printing of a second
edition of six hundred copies was begun, which was completed (in
two impressions) within the term of three months.
The printer, Nicolas Jenson, was born in the province of
Champagne about 1420, and was brought up in the Paris Mint. He
was sent to Mayence in 1458 by Charles VII. to learn the secrets of
the new art of printing. He returned to France in 1461, shortly after
the accession of Louis XI. It is not clear whether the new king was
less interested than had been his predecessor in the development of
French printing, or whether Jenson was afforded any opportunity for
exercising his art in Paris. In 1465, however, he is heard of in Venice,
and he began there, in 1470, a printing and publishing business
which soon became the most important in Italy.
There were many reasons to influence Jenson in his choice of
Venice as the scene of his operations. In the first place, the tide of
printers was flowing steadily towards Italy. Apprentices who had
acquired the new art in Germany set out to seek their fortunes by the
exercise of their skill. It was natural that they should turn to Italy,
where the nobles were rich, where learning had its home, where
there were already many manuscripts available for the printers, and
where there was a public, both lay and ecclesiastic, ready to pay for
the reproductions. The Venetian Republic offered special attractions
in the security afforded by its government, and in the protection and
liberty she promised to all who settled in her dominions. Venice was,
moreover, the best mart for the distribution of goods, and the trade in
paper was facilitated by the ease and cheapness of sea-carriage.
The first rag paper was made about the year 1300, and the trade
of paper-making soon became an important one in Italy. In 1373, the
Venetian Senate forbade the exportation of rags from the dominions
of the Republic, an act which recalls the edict of Ptolemy
Philadelphus in 290 b.c., forbidding the exportation of papyrus from
Alexandria.
The position of Venice secured for it exceptional facilities for
becoming a literary and a publishing centre, facilities in some
respects similar to those which eighteen hundred years earlier had
given to Alexandria the control of the book production of its time. The
Venetian Contarini, writing in 1591, speaks of “the wonderful
situation of the city, which possesses so many advantages that one
might think the site had been selected not by men but by the gods
themselves. The city lies in a quiet inlet of the Adriatic Sea. On the
side towards the sea, the waters of the lagoons are spread out like a
series of lakes, while far in the distance the bow-shaped peninsula of
the Lido serves as a protection against the storms from the south.
On the side towards the main land, the city is, in like manner,
surrounded and protected by the waters of its lagoons. Various
canals serve as roadways between the different islands, and in the
midst of the lakes and of these watery ways arise in stately groups
the palaces and the towers of the city.”
It was by the thoroughness of the protection secured for Venice
through its watery defences, no less than by its isolated position
outside of, although in immediate connection with, the Italian
territory, that the Republic was enabled to keep free from a large
proportion of the contests petty and great that troubled or devastated
Italian territory during the sixteenth century.
When it was drawn into a conflict, its fighting was done very
largely by means of its fleets, operating at a distance, or with the aid
of foreign troops hired for the purpose, and but rarely were the actual
operations of war brought within touch of Venetian territory. Its
control of the approaches by sea prevented also the connections
with the outer world from being interfered with. The city could neither
be blockaded nor surrounded, and in whatever warlike operations it
might be engaged, its commercial undertakings went on practically
undisturbed. It was under very similar conditions that Alexandria
secured, in literary production and in publishing operations during
the fourth and the third centuries b.c., pre-eminence over Pergamus
and the other Greek cities of Asia Minor. The fact that manuscripts
and printing-presses could be fairly protected against the risks of
war, and that the road to the markets of the world for the productions
of the presses could not easily be blocked, had an important
influence during the century succeeding 1490, in attracting printers
to Venice rather than to Bologna, Milan, or Florence. The Venetian
government was also prompt to recognise the value of the new
industry and the service and the prestige that were being conferred
upon the city by the work of the printer-publishers and their scholarly
editors. The Republic gave, from the outset, more care to the
furthering of this work by privileges and concessions and by
honourable recognition of the guild of the printers than was given in
any other Italian state. To these advantages should be added the
valuable relations possessed by Venice with the scholars of the
Greek world, through its old-time connections with Constantinople
and Asia Minor. It was through these connections that the printers of
Venice secured what might be called the first pick of the manuscripts
of a large number of the Greek texts that became known to Europe
during the half-century succeeding 1490.
These texts were brought in part from the monasteries, which had
been spared by the Turkish conquerors in the Byzantine territory and
in Asia Minor, while in other cases, they came to light in various
corners of Italy, where the scholars, flying from Constantinople after
the great disaster of 1453, had found refuge. As it became known
that in Venice there was demand for Greek manuscripts, and that
Venetian printers were offering compensation to scholars for editing
Greek texts for the press, scholars speedily found their way to the
City of the Lagoons. To many of these scholars, who had been
driven impoverished from their homes in the East, the opportunity of
securing a livelihood through the sale and through the editing of their
manuscripts must have opened up new and important possibilities.
In 1479, Jenson sold to Andrea Torresano of Asola, later the
father-in-law of Aldus Manutius, a set of the matrices punched by his
punches. These matrices were probably the beginning of the plant of
the later business of Aldus. In 1479, Pope Sixtus IV. conferred upon
Jenson the honourary title of Count Palatine. He was the first
nobleman in the guild of publishers, and he has had but few
successors. He died in 1480.
John of Windelin, John of Speyer, and Nicolas Jenson, the three
earliest Venetian printers, employed three kinds of characters in their
type—Roman, Gothic, and Greek. The Gothic character secured, as
compared with the others, a considerable economy of space, and its
use became, therefore, more general in connection with the
increased demand from the reading public for less expensive
editions. Before the Greek fonts had been made, it was customary to
leave blanks in the text where the Greek passages occurred and to
fill these in by hand.
It was the practice of the later printer-publishers to place in their
books the date, place of publication, and their own names, and
considering how much the editing, printing, and publication of a book
involved, it was natural that those who were responsible for it should
be interested in securing the full credit for its production. It is
nevertheless the case that quite a number of books, of no little
importance, were issued by the earlier printers without any imprint or
mark of origin, an omission which, as Brown remarks, is certainly
surprising in view of the high esteem in which printers were held and
of the large claims made by them upon the gratitude of their own age
and of future generations.
The larger proportion of the outlay required for these early books
was not the expense of the manufacturing, heavy as this was, but
the payments required for the purchase of manuscripts, and for their
revision, collation, correction, and preparation for the type-setters.
The printer-publisher needed to possess a fair measure of
scholarly knowledge in order to be able to judge rightly of the nature
of the editorial work that was required before the work of the type-
setters could begin. If, as in the case of Aldus, this scholarly
knowledge was sufficient to enable the printer himself to act as
editor, to revise the manuscripts for the press, and to write the
introduction and the critical annotations, he had of course a very
great advantage in the conduct of his business.
As an example of the cost of printing in Venice at this period,
Brown cites an agreement entered into in 1478 between a certain
Leonardus, printer, and Nicolaus, who took the risk of the
undertaking, acting, therefore, as a publisher. An edition of 930
copies of the complete Bible was to be printed by Leonardus for the
price of 430 ducats, the paper being furnished by Nicolaus. Twenty
of the copies were to be retained by Leonardus, and the cost to
Nicolaus of the 910 copies received by him would have been,
exclusive of the paper, about $2150, or per copy about $2.50. The
cost of the paper would have brought the amount up to about $3.
The selling price of Bibles in 1492 appears to have varied from 6
ducats to 12 ducats, or from $30 to $60, but it is probable that these
prices covered various styles of bindings.
The years between 1470 and 1515 witnessed a greater increase
in the number of printers at work in Venice, a considerable proportion
of the newcomers being Germans. With the rapid growth in the
production of books, there came a material deterioration in the
quality of the typography. The original models for the type-founders
had been the letters of the manuscripts, and it was the boast of the
earlier founders that their type was so perfect that it could not be
distinguished from script. The copyists realised that their art was in
danger, and, in 1474, they went so far in their opposition in Genoa as
to petition the Senate for the expulsion of the printers. The
application was, however, disregarded; the new art met at once with
a cordial reception, and from the beginning secured the active
support of the government.
The trade of the printers could, however, not rest upon a secure
foundation until the taste for reading had become popularised. The
wealthy classes were not sufficiently numerous to keep the printing-
presses busy, while it was also the case that for a number of years
after the invention of printing, a considerable proportion of the
wealthier collectors of literature continued to give their preference to
manuscripts as being more aristocratic and exclusive. The earlier
books issued from the presses were planned to meet the
requirements of these higher class collectors, whose taste had been
formed from beautiful manuscripts. With the second generation of
printers, however, a new market arose calling for a different class of
supplies. The revival of learning brought into existence a reading
public which was eager for knowledge and which was no longer
fastidious as to the beauty of the form in which its literature was
presented. By 1490, a demand had arisen for cheap books for
popular reading, and in changing their methods to meet this demand,
the printers permitted the standard of excellence of their work to
suffer a material decline.
Brown gives an abstract from the day-book of a Venetian
bookseller of 1484-1485, the original of which is contained in the
Marcian Library. Even at that early date, we find represented in the
stock of the bookseller, classics, Bibles, missals, breviaries, works
on canon law, school-books, romances, and poetry.
The record shows that the purchases of the bookseller from the
publisher were usually made for cash, and that for the most part he
received cash from his customers. In some cases, however, these
latter made their payment in kind. Thus a chronicle was exchanged
for oil; Cicero’s Orations for wine; and a general assortment of books
for flour; while different binders’ bills were settled, the one with the
Life and Miracles of the Madonna, and the other with the series of
the Hundred Novels. The proof-reader was paid for certain services
with copies of a Mamotrictus, a Legendary, and a Bible, and an
account from an illuminator was adjusted with an Abacus, (a
multiplication table, or a condensed arithmetic).
The prices of books ruled lower than might have been expected,
the cheapest being volumes of poetry and romance. For instance,
Poggio’s Facetiæ sells for nine soldi, and the Inamoramento
d’Orlando for one lira, while Dante’s Inferno with a commentary,
brings one ducat, and Plutarch’s Lives, two ducats. A small volume
of Martial brought fifteen soldi. The editions of certain printers
realised higher prices than those of the same books by other printers
whose imprint did not carry with it so much prestige.
It was during the last ten years of the fifteenth century that the
business of printing and publishing in Venice reached its highest
importance as compared with that done elsewhere. It was this
decade that witnessed the founding of the Greek press by Aldus,
Vlastos, and Caliergi, the first printing in Arabic and in the other
Eastern languages, and the beginning of the publication of romances
and novelieri.
The part taken in these new undertakings by Aldus Manutius was
of distinctive importance, not only for Venice and Italy, but for the
civilised world. He was a skilled printer, and an enterprising, public-
spirited publisher, and he was, further, a judicious and painstaking
critic and editor, and a scholar of exceptional attainments. To him
more than to any other one man is due the introduction into Europe
of the literature of Greece, which was in a measure rediscovered at
the time, when, by the use of the printing-press, it could be placed
within the reach of wide circles of impecunious students to whom the
purchase of costly manuscripts would have been impossible.
In his interest in Greek literature, as well as in his scholarship and
public-spirited liberality, Aldus was a worthy successor to the Roman
publisher of the first century who had earned the appellation of
Atticus on account of the attention given by him to the reproduction
for the reading public of Italy of the great classics of Greece. Atticus
was, however, a man of large means, gained chiefly through his
business as a banker and a farmer of taxes, and it appears to have
been to him a matter of indifference whether or not his publishing
undertakings returned any profits on the moneys invested in them.
Aldus began business without capital and died a poor man. Not
many of his books secured for the publisher profits as well as
prestige. He lived modestly and laboured continuously, but he
expended in fresh scholarly publishing undertakings all the receipts
that came to him from such of his ventures as proved remunerative.
As before pointed out, the payments made by Aldus for the work
of editing his series of classical publications, payments which were
probably the first ever made in Italy for literary work in connection
with printing, were not only of material service to many of the
impecunious Greek scholars, but must have served as precedents
for fixing, for Italy at least, a market value for literary service. The
payments to the Greek refugees included in a number of cases
compensation for the use of the manuscripts they had brought with
them, manuscripts which not infrequently constituted practically
everything in the shape of property that they had been able to save
from the grasp of the Turks. For a number of the more scholarly of
these refugees, places were made in the universities, or as we
should now say, Chairs were endowed, for instruction in the
language and literature of Greece. Aldus himself took the initiative in
inducing the Venetian Senate to institute such a professorship in
Padua for his friend Musurus.
For a number of years, a larger proportion of the scholars and the
manuscripts was absorbed by Venice than by any other of the Italian
cities. The production of books progressed more rapidly in Venice
than elsewhere, and the art of bookmaking reached a higher
perfection there during the first decade of the sixteenth century than
in any city in Europe. As before noted, however, Subiaco had
preceded Venice in the printing of books, while the use of Greek
type, in which Venice so rapidly attained pre-eminence, occurred first
in Milan. The introduction of illustrations into book-printing probably
originated in Rome.
Aldus Manutius.—It seems to me in order, for the purpose
of my narrative, to present in some detail the record of the life and
work of Aldus. The history of any representative printer-publisher
whose career belonged to the earlier stages of the business of
making and selling books, would have value in throwing light on the
extent of the difficulties and obstacles to be overcome and on the
nature of the methods adopted; the career of Aldus possesses,
however, not merely such typical value but a distinctive and
individual interest, as well because of the personality of the man as
on the ground of the exceptional importance, for his own community
and for future generations, of the service rendered by him.
Aldus Manutius was born at Bassiano in the Romagna, in 1450,
the year in which Gutenberg completed his printing-press. He
studied in Rome and in Ferrara, and after having mastered Latin, he
devoted himself, under the tutorship of Guarini of Verona, to the
study of Greek. Later, he delivered lectures on the Latin and Greek
classics. One of his fellow students in Ferrara was the precocious
young scholar Pico della Mirandola, whose friendship was
afterwards of material service. In 1482, when Ferrara was being
besieged by the Venetians and scholarly pursuits were interrupted,
Aldus was the guest of Pico at Mirandola, where he met Emanuel
Adramyttenos, one of the many Greek scholars who, when driven
out of Constantinople, had found refuge in the Courts of Italian
princes. Aldus spent two years at Mirandola, and under the influence
and guidance of Adramyttenos, he largely increased his knowledge
of the language and literature of Greece. His friend had brought from
the East a number of manuscripts, many of which found their way
into the library of Pico.
In 1482, Aldus took charge of the education of the sons of the
Princess of Carpi, a sister of Pico, and the zeal and scholarly
capacity which he devoted to his task won for him the life-long
friendship of both mother and sons. It was in Carpi that Aldus
developed the scheme of utilising his scholarly knowledge and
connections for the printing of Latin and Greek classics. The plan
was a bold one for a young scholar without capital. Printing and
publishing constituted a practically untried field of business, not
merely for Aldus but for Italy. Everything had to be created or
developed; knowledge of the art of printing and of all the
technicalities of book-manufacturing; fonts of type, Roman and
Greek; a force of type-setters and pressmen and a staff of skilled
revisers and proof-readers; a collection of trustworthy texts to serve
as “copy” for the compositors; and last, but by no means least, a
book-buying public and a book-selling machinery by which such
public could be reached.
It was the aim of Aldus, as he himself expressed it, to rescue from
oblivion the words of the classic writers, the monuments of human
intellect. He writes in 1490: “I have resolved to devote my life to the
cause of scholarship. I have chosen in place of a life of ease and
freedom, an anxious and toilsome career. A man has higher
responsibilities than the seeking of his own enjoyment; he should
devote himself to honourable labour. Living that is a mere existence
can be left to men who are content to be animals. Cato compared
human existence to iron. When nothing is done with it, it rusts; it is
only through constant activity that polish or brilliancy is secured.” The
world has probably never produced a publisher who united with
these high ideals and exceptional scholarly attainments, so much
practical business ability and persistent pluck.
The funds required for the undertaking were furnished by the
Princess of Carpi and her sons, probably with some co-operation
from Pico, and in 1494, Aldus organised his printing-office in Venice.
His first publication, issued in 1495, was the Greek and Latin
Grammar of Laskaris, a suitable forerunner for his great classical
series. The second issue from his Press was an edition of the Works
of Aristotle, the first volume of which was also completed in 1495.
This was followed in 1496 by the Greek Grammar of Gaza, and in
1497 by a Greek-Latin Dictionary compiled by Aldus himself.
The business cares of these first years of his printing business
were not allowed to prevent him from going on with his personal
studies. In 1502, he published, in a handsome quarto volume, a
comprehensive grammar under the title of Rudimenta Grammatices
Linguæ Latinæ, etc. cum Introductione ad Hebraicam Linguam, to
the preparation of which he had devoted years of arduous labour.
Piratical editions were promptly issued in Florence, Lyons, and Paris.
He also wrote the Grammaticæ Institutiones Græcæ (a labour of
some years), which was not published until 1515, after the death of
the author.
It will be noted that nearly all the undertakings to which he gave,
both as editor and as publisher, his earliest attention, were the
necessary first steps in the great scheme of the reproduction of the
complete series of the Greek classics. Before editors or proof-
readers could go on with the work of preparing the Greek texts for
the press, dictionaries and grammars had to be created. Laskaris,
whose Grammar initiated the series, was a refugee from the East,
and at the time of the publication of his work, was an instructor in
Messina. No record has been preserved of the arrangement made
with him by his Venetian publisher, a deficiency that is the more to be
regretted as his Grammar was probably the very first work by a living
author, printed in Italy. Gaza was a native of Greece, and was for a
time associated with the Aldine Press as a Greek editor.
In 1500, Aldus married the daughter of the printer Andrea
Torresano of Asola, previously referred to as the successor of the
Frenchman Jenson and the purchaser of Jenson’s matrices. In 1507,
the two printing concerns were united, and the savings of Torresano
were utilised to strengthen the resources of Aldus, which had
become impaired, probably through his too great optimism and
publishing enterprise.
During the disastrous years of 1509-1511, in which Venice was
harassed by the wars resulting from the League of Cambray, the
business came to a stand-still, partly because the channels of
distribution for the books were practically blocked, but partly also on
account of the exhaustion of the available funds. Friends again
brought to the publisher the aid to which, on the ground of his public-
spirited undertakings, he was so well entitled, and he was enabled,
after the peace of 1511, to proceed with the completion of his Greek
classics. Before his death in 1515, Aldus had issued in this series
the works of Aristotle, Plato, Homer, Pindar, Euripides, Sophocles,
Aristophanes, Demosthenes, Lysias, Æschines, Herodotus,
Thucydides, Xenophon, Plutarch, and others, in addition to a
companion series of the works of the chief Latin writers. The list of
publications included in all some 100 different works, comprised (in
their several editions) in about 250 volumes. Considering the special
difficulties of the times and the exceptional character of the original
and creative labour that was required to secure the texts, to prepare
them for the press, to print them correctly, and to bring them to the
attention of possible buyers, this list of undertakings is, in my
judgment, by far the greatest and the most honourable in the whole
history of publishing.
It was a disadvantage for carrying on scholarly publishing
undertakings in Venice, that the city possessed no university, a
disadvantage that was only partly offset by the proximity of Padua,
which early in the fifteenth century had come under Venetian rule. A
university would of course have been of service to a publisher like
Aldus, not only in supplying a home market for his books, but in
placing at his disposal scholarly assistants whose services could be
utilised in editing the texts and in supervising their type-setting. The
correspondence of members of a university with the scholars of
other centres of learning, could be made valuable also in securing
information as to available manuscripts and concerning scholarly
undertakings generally. In the absence of a university circle, Aldus
was obliged to depend upon his personal efforts to bring him into
relations, through correspondence, with men of learning throughout
Europe, and to gather about the Aldine Press a group of scholarly
associates and collaborators.
The chief corrector or proof-reader for Greek work of the Press
was John Gregoropoulos, of Candia. Some editorial service was
rendered by Theodore Gaza, of Athens, who took part, for instance,
in the work on the set of Aristotle. The most important, however, of
the Greek associates of Aldus was Marcus Musurus, of Crete,
whose name appears as the editor of the Aristophanes, Athenæus,
Plato, and a number of other of the Greek authors in the Aldine
series, and also of the important collection of Epistolæ Græcarum.
 Musurus was an early friend of Pico, and later of his nephew,
Alberto Pio, and it was at Carpi that he had first met Aldus, with
whom he ever afterwards maintained a close intimacy. In 1502,
probably at the instance of Aldus, Musurus was called by the
Venetian Senate to occupy the Chair of belles-lettres at Padua, and
he appears to have given his lectures not only in the University, but
also in Venice. Aldus writes: “Scholars hasten to Venice, the Athens
of our day, to listen to the teachings of Musurus, the greatest scholar
of the age.”
In 1503, the Senate charged Musurus with the task of exercising a
censorship over all Greek books printed in Venice, with reference
particularly to the suppression of anything inimical to the Roman
Church. This seems to have been the earliest attempt in Italy to
supervise the work of the printing-press. It is natural enough that the
ecclesiastics should have dreaded the influence of the introduction of
the doctrines of the Greek Church, while it is certainly probable that
many of the refugees from Constantinople brought with them no very
cordial feeling towards Rome. The belief was very general that if the
Papacy had not felt a greater enmity against the Greek Church than
against the Turk, the Catholic states of Europe would have saved
Constantinople. The sacking of Constantinople by the Christian
armies of the Fourth Crusade was still remembered by the Christians
of the East as a crime of the Western Church. There were, therefore,
reasons enough why the authorities of Rome should think it
necessary to keep a close watch over the new literature coming in
from the East, and should do what was practicable to exclude all
doctrinal writings, and the censorship instituted in 1502 was the
beginning of a long series of rigorous enactments which proved,
however, much less practicable to carry out in Venice than
elsewhere in Italy.
Other literary advisers and associates of Aldus were Hieronymus
Alexander (later Cardinal), Pietro Bembo, Scipio Carteromachus,
Demetrius Doucas, Johann Reuchlin, and, above all, Erasmus of
Rotterdam, whose learning rivalled that of Musurus, and who,
outside of Italy, was far more widely known than the Greek scholar.
 It was in the year 1500 that the scheme took shape in the mind of
Aldus of an academy which should take the place in Venice that in
Florence was occupied by the academy instituted by the Medici. The
special aim of the Aldine Academy, to which Aldus gave the name
Ne-accademia Nostra, was the furthering of the interest in, and
knowledge of, the literature of classic Greece. Aldus himself was the
first president of the Academy, and while the majority of the
members were residents either of Venice or of Padua, the original list
included scholars of Rome, of Bologna, and of Lucca, Greeks of
Candia, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and others from distant places.
Aldus applied to the Emperor Maximilian for a diploma giving
imperial sanction to the organisation of his Academy, but the
Emperor, although, as is shown in other correspondence, friendly in
his disposition to the printer, was from some cause unwilling to give
an official recognition to the Academy. The constitution of the
Academy was printed in Greek, and certain days were fixed on
which the members gave their personal consideration to the
examination of Greek texts, the publication of which was judged
likely to be of service to scholarship.
With the editorial aid of certain members of the Academy, Aldus
arranged to print each month, in an edition of one thousand copies,
some work selected by the Council. This Council, therefore, took
upon itself in the matter of the selection of Greek classics for
presentation, a function similar to that exercised 300 b.c. by the
scholars appointed for the purpose in the Academy of Ptolemy
Philadelphus, while some of its functions might be paralleled by
those exercised to-day by the Delegates of the Clarendon Press of
Oxford. It was the hope of Aldus that this Venetian Academy would
take upon itself larger responsibilities in connection not only with
Greek literature but with arts and sciences generally. When,
however, with the death of its president, the Academy lost the
service of his energetic initiative, its work soon came to a close.
For the sale of his publications, Aldus was in the main dependent
upon direct correspondence with scholars. In Italy prior to 1550,
bookselling hardly existed as an organised trade, and while in
Germany there was a larger number of dealers in books, and the
book-trade had by 1510 already organised its Fair at Frankfort, the
communications between Italy and Germany were still too difficult to
enable a publisher in Venice to keep in regular relations with the
dealers north of the Alps. Paris was probably easier to reach than
Frankfort, but the sales in Paris were not a little interfered with by the
Lyons piracy editions before referred to, and even by piracies of the
Paris publishers themselves. Aldus succeeded, however, before his
death in securing agents who were prepared to take orders for the
Aldine classics, not only in Paris, but in Vienna, Basel, Augsburg,
and Nuremberg. With Frankfort he appears to have had no direct
dealings, as his name does not appear in the list of contributors to
the recently instituted Book-Fair.
As an example of a business letter of the time, the following lines
from a bookseller in Treviso, who wanted to buy books on credit, are
worth quoting:

Alde, libros quos venales bene credere possis

Hic pollet multa bibliopola fide.
Fortunis pollet quantum illa negotia possunt;
Hoc me, Manuti, credere teste potes!
Ignoras qui sim, nec adhuc sine pignore credis;
Te meus erga ingens sit tibi pignus amor.

(You have books for sale, Aldus, which you are able to entrust to
me, if as a dealer, you have sufficient faith. This confidence would
secure for you as much business advantage as is possible in such
transactions. You can accept in this matter my personal word. You
do not know who I am, and do not make a practice of giving credit.
My great regard for you should, however, serve as a sufficient
pledge.)[448]

The business of the time was done very largely by personal

correspondence, and as the knowledge of his editions of the Greek
classics came to be spread abroad, Aldus found himself
overburdened with enquiries calling for personal replies. In order to
save time in replying to such enquiries, Aldus printed on a folio sheet
the descriptive titles of his publications with the prices at which they
were offered. This sheet, printed in 1498, was the first priced
catalogue ever issued by a publisher.
The orders that came to Aldus for his books differed in one
important respect from those received by a publisher or bookseller
to-day. The buyers did not write as a matter of ordinary business
routine, or as if they were conferring any favour upon the publisher in
taking his goods, but with a very cordial sense of the personal
obligation that the publisher was, through his undertakings,
conferring upon them and upon all scholarly persons. As an example
of many such letters, I will quote from one written in 1505, from a
Cistercian monastery in the Thuringian Forest, by a scholarly monk
named Urbanus:
“May the blessing of the Lord rest upon thee, thou illustrious man.
The high reward in which you are held by our Brotherhood will be
realised by you when you learn that we have ordered (through the
house of Függer in Augsburg) a group of your valuable publications,
and that it is our chief desire to be able to purchase all the others.
We pray to God each day that He will in His mercy, long preserve
you for the cause of good learning. Our neighbour, Mutianus Rufus,
the learned Canonicus of Gotha, calls you ‘the light of our age,’ and
is never weary of relating your great services to scholarship. He
sends you a cordial greeting, as does also Magister Spalatinus, a
man of great learning. We are sending you with this four gold ducats,
and will ask you to send us (through Függer) an Etymologicum
Magnum and a Julius Pollux, and also (if there be money sufficient)
the writings of Bessarion, of Xenophon, and of Hierocles, and the
Letters of Merula.”[449]
Troublesome as Aldus found his correspondence, letters of this
kind must have been peculiarly gratifying as evidence that his
labours were not in vain.
He had similar correspondence with the well-known scholar,
Reuchlin, an appreciative friend and a grateful customer, who in
1501, at the time of the first letters, was resident in Heidelberg, and
also with Longinus and the poet Conrad Celtes in Vienna. The latter
was later of service to Aldus in securing for his Press valuable
manuscripts from Bohemia, and from certain monasteries in
Transylvania. The name of Celtes is further of note in the literary
history of Germany because to him was issued the earliest German
privilege of which there is record. It bears date 1501, and protected
the publication of an edition by Celtes of the writings of the
Benedictine nun Hroswitha (Helena von Rossow), who had been
dead for 600 years.
The most famous of the transalpine scholars with whom Aldus
came into relations was, however, Desiderius Erasmus, of
Rotterdam, or to speak with more precision, of Europe. Erasmus has
many titles to fame, but for the purposes of this treatise his career is
noteworthy more particularly because he was one of the first authors
who was able to secure his living, or the more important portion of
this, from the proceeds of his writings. The career of Erasmus
belongs properly to the chapter on Germany, as it was in Basel, at
that time a city of the Empire, that he made his longest sojourn, in
close association with his life-long friend Froben, the scholarly
publisher whom Erasmus called the “Aldus of Germany.”
In 1506, Erasmus, who had been in England for a second visit,
came to Italy, where he lectured in the Universities of Bologna and
Padua, and from Padua he was induced by Aldus to transfer himself
to Venice. There he remained during the year 1508, making his
home with the publisher, and rendering important service as a
literary adviser and in editorial work. There is no record of any formal
or continued business arrangement between the scholar and the
publisher, and it is very possible that no such arrangement took
shape.
Erasmus took charge of the preparation for the press, among
other works, of the Aldine editions of Terence, Seneca, Plutarch’s
Morals, and Plautus. For his work on the Plautus he tells us that he
received twenty pieces of gold (i. e., ducats). Later, however, he
denied with some indignation, in writing to Scaliger, that he had
worked as a “corrector” or proof-reader for Aldus. It should be borne
in mind that in connection with the many difficulties in securing from
more or less doubtful manuscripts trustworthy texts, and in educating