|
Portugal Local Government
Portugal has long been a centralized political system
not
only in terms of its legal system, but also in terms of
its
system of public administration. The pattern, like the
legal
system, derives from Roman law and the French Napoleonic
Code.
The result was that Portugal's central authorities kept
most
powers for themselves and administered the country from
Lisbon.
Local government remained underdeveloped and passive.
The framers of the constitution of 1976 sought to
change this
pattern of centralization. Article 238 of the 1989 revised
constitution states that "local authorities on the
mainland shall
be the parishes, municipal authorities and the
administrative
regions." A plan for dividing Portugal into seven
administrative
regions (five based on the country's major river basins,
and one
each for the Porto and Lisbon metropolitan areas) had been
worked
out in the mid-1970s, but in the early 1990s its
implementation
had not yet been effected. Fear of officials in the
capital that
they would lose power to local authorities was seen as a
principal reason for this delay.
Article 291 of the revised constitution of 1989 states
that
until the administrative regions have been created, the
highest
level of subnational government will be the mainland's
eighteen
districts, administrative divisions established in the
nineteenth
century. In the early 1990s, these eighteen districts
(each
bearing the name of its capital) constituted the layer of
government between the national government and local
government.
Portugal was not a federal state, and the districts had no
legislative powers. District officials conducted
elections,
maintained public order, and exercised what the Portuguese
termed
"administrative tutelage" by monitoring the performance of
local
government. Each district was directed by a civil
governor, who
was a political appointee.
The districts did not function as administrative
bodies. As a
result, most of the national government's activities were
carried
out by the ministries within territorial divisions that
they
established and that did not necessarily correspond with
those of
the districts. The district governor was not seen as
occupying a
higher position than ministerial officials.
Because the administrative regions envisioned in the
constitution had not been established as of the early
1990s,
Portugal's local government at that time consisted of 305
municipalities, further subdivided into about 4,000
parishes.
Despite its name, a parish had no ecclesiastical functions
but
merely provided social assistance and maintained voter
registration lists. An elected parish assembly met four
times a
year and chose the parish board, which served as the
parish's
government. The board drew up the parish's budget,
executed the
parish assembly's laws, and managed its public business.
The size
of these bodies was determined by the population of the
parish.
Municipalities, like parishes, were classified as urban
or
rural, except for those of Lisbon and Porto, which were
classified as metropolitan areas. A municipality was
governed by
a municipal assembly, half of whose members were elected
every
four years and half of whom were the presidents of parish
boards
operating within the municipality. A municipal assembly
met five
times a year, and its members were unpaid. A
municipality's
executive body was the municipal chamber. Its members
(aldermen)
were elected, served year-round, and were paid. The
chamber was
headed by a president (mayor). The president of a
municipal
chamber was the candidate for that body who had received
the most
votes. Each chamber had a council, composed of
representatives
from a variety of organizations, which served as a
consultative
body. The size of these municipal bodies was determined by
the
number of registered voters within a municipality.
The many tasks managed by a municipality were carried
out
both by city employees and private firms considered part
of the
municipal government. Funds to pay for these tasks came
both from
the national government and local sources (taxes,
licensing fees,
etc). The constitution stipulates that these local
authorities
should be financially independent, and plans existed to
establish
by law a system of local finance that would arrange the
"fair
apportionment" of public funds between the state and local
authorities. As of the early 1990s, however, over 90
percent of
the funds used by local government were still national in
origin.
In addition, the national government was obliged to see
that
these funds were spent properly, thereby reducing even
further
the independence of local authorities.
Data as of January 1993
|
