Monarchy and Republic in Contemporary Portugal: From Revolution to the Rise of Executive Power

During the construction of the contemporary Portuguese state, the growing predominance of executive power was a decisive factor in the transition from revolution to stabilization. Within this process, the monarchy evolved towards a parliamentary government, which became the only feasible model. For the republic however, there were alternatives: presidentialism, parliamentarism borrowed from monarchy, and various combinations thereof. Like other European countries, Portugal built its contemporary state on the foundations of the monarchy, successively establishing the models most appropriate for the time and most acceptable to political doctrines: first, the revolutionary model which produced an Assembly monarchy, then the parliamentary government, which adapted monarchy to constitutionalism. The republic, which only came into being in the twentieth century, had to face the crisis of parliamentarianism. Through devising alternatives, it became a testing ground for the new political culture and its implementation, just as the monarchy had been in the nineteenth century.