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Portugal Political Parties
As Portugal became democratic after 1974, it also
developed a
political party system with a full spectrum of parties
that
ranged from the far left to the far right. During the
SalazarCaetano regime, only one party was legal, the National
Union
(União Nacional--UN), later renamed the National Popular
Action
(Acção Nacional Popular--ANP). The UN/ANP was dissolved in
the
first weeks of the revolution, and a great variety of new
parties
soon replaced it.
Some political parties emerged very quickly because
they
already existed in preliminary form. Several factions of
the old
UN/ANP, for example, became separate political parties
after the
revolution. The socialists and, to a far greater extent,
the
communists already had underground groups operating in
Portugal,
as well as organizations in exile. Finally, some
opposition
elements had formed "study groups" that served as the
basis of
later political parties.
The party system increased in importance during the
Second
Republic. Large, strong parties were fostered under the
d'Hondt
method of proportional representation, and parties soon
began to
receive state subsidies. The parties' strength was also
bolstered
by their exclusive right to nominate political candidates
and by
the strict party discipline they enforced on successful
candidates once they entered parliament. By the beginning
of the
early 1990s, only four parties regularly won seats in the
parliament, and two were so much stronger than the others
that
Portugal seemed on the way to an essentially two-party
system.
Data as of January 1993
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