THE POLITICAL-ADMINISTRATIVE MODEL OF THE PORTUGUESE NEW STATE: CORPORATISM AND POLITICAL REPRESENTATION OF MUNICIPALITIES (1936-1959)

Abstract

The Portuguese historiography has not given enough prominence to the role played by the political and administrative reform carried out by Salazar in 1936, .minimizing the role it had in the political consolidation of the New Corporate State. The political-administrative model of the New State according to the Constitution of 1933 and the Administrative Code of 1936 breaks with the liberal and demo liberal tradition of election and of political representation of the municipalities, substituting this individual representation by the organic and corporative suffrage. To understand, therefore, how Salazar integrated into the corporative state the local municipalities it cannot be also a way to meet an important part of the explanation of the nature of the New State and even of its governance arrangements and political legitimacy.