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Portugal Social Democrat Party
The Social Democrat Party (Partido Social
Democrata--PSD)
emerged as the somewhat open and tolerated opposition
under
Caetano in the early 1970s. For a time, the PSD, then
known as
the Popular Democratic Party (Partido Popular
Democrata--PPD),
adopted the reformist political doctrines popular during
the
revolutionary period of the mid-1970s. It was soon
overtaken,
however, by the PS as the main opposition party, and it
moved
toward the democratic center. The radical constitution of
1976
was drafted and promulgated with its help, but even then
the PSD
was committed to its revision.
The PSD's fortunes generally improved as revolutionary
fervor
waned. In the earliest postrevolutionary elections, the
PSD got
about 24 to 27 percent of the vote, second to the PS. It
had
scored well in the conservative north of Portugal but not
in the
revolutionary south. As the party began to occupy the
broad
center of the political spectrum under the dynamic
leadership of
Francisco Sá Carneiro, the PSD's electoral support grew.
In 1978
the PSD formed an electoral coalition, the Democratic
Alliance
(Aliança Democrática--AD), with two other parties and came
to
power in early 1980 with Sá Carneiro as prime minister.
Since the
formation of this government, the PSD remained in
government
throughout the 1980s and into the first half of the 1990s,
either
as part of a coalition, in a minority single-party
cabinet, or as
a majority single-party government.
The AD won the parliamentary election of October 1980,
but
the coalition's forward movement slowed somewhat after the
death
of Sá Carneiro in a plane crash in December 1980. His
successor,
Expresso founder and editor Francisco Pinto
Balsemão,
lacked Sá Carneiro's forcefulness and charisma. The party
formed
an electoral coalition with the PS in 1983, the Central
Bloc, and
was in government until 1985 when the coalition ended. For
two
years, the PSD formed a minority government with its new
leader,
Aníbal Cavaco Silva, as prime minister. In the 1987
national
elections, the PSD won the Second Republic's first
absolute
parliamentary majority, a feat the party repeated in the
1991
elections. By consistently favoring free-market policies,
the PSD
benefited from Portugal's improved economy after the
country
joined the EC in 1986 and the electorate's return to a
more
conservative position after the radical politics of the
mid1970s .
Data as of January 1993
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