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Portugal The Council of State
The Council of State, which in the 1982 constitutional
reform
replaced the Council of the Revolution, functions as a
high-level
advisory body to the president. Its members consist of the
president of the Assembly of the Republic, the prime
minister,
the president of the Constitutional Court, the ombudsman,
the
chairpersons of the regional governments, former
presidents, five
citizens appointed by the president, and five persons
elected by
the Assembly of the Republic.
The council was a broadly consultative group with deep
roots
in Portuguese history. It was a kind of throwback to an
earlier
Portuguese concept of corporative, regional, or functional
representation. However, it had no executive power and in
recent
times had been called into its advisory capacity only
rarely. As
a result, membership on it had come to be mainly honorary.
Data as of January 1993
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