|
Portugal Middle Class
Portugal was long an essentially two-class society
consisting
of elites and peasants, between which existed a small
class of
artisans, soldiers, and tradespeople. With the
acceleration of
industrialization and economic development since the
1950s, this
middle class began to grow. It provided the strongest
opposition
to the Salazar-Caetano regime as it came to prefer
democracy and
a more open West European society. As a result, the middle
class
participated strongly in the Revolution of 1974 and the
political
maneuvering that followed. After the old elites were
shunted
aside by the revolution and labor organizations lost power
the
following decade, the middle class emerged as Portugal's
most
important class.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the middle class
constituted
some 25 to 30 percent of the population. The most
important
Portuguese institutions were middle class-dominated: the
military
officer corps, the Roman Catholic Church, political
parties,
public administration, the universities, and commerce and
industry.
The middle class remained divided on many social and
political issues, however. For example, political
leadership in
Portugal was solidly middle class and spanned all parties
from
the far left to the far right. The success of the PSD
under
Cavaco Silva both in parliament and in the election of
1987 was
perhaps an indication that Portugal's new socially
significant
middle class was developing a degree of social cohesion.
The commercial segment of the middle class defended its
interests through the PSD and the CDS and also through
some large
representative organizations. The leading organizations of
this
type were the Portuguese Industrial Association
(Associação
Industrial Portuguesa--AIP), founded in 1860, the much
larger
Confederation of Portuguese Industry (Confederação da
Indústria
Portuguesa--CIP), founded in 1974, and the Portuguese
Confederation of Commerce (Confederação do Comércio
Português--
CCP), founded in 1977. These organizations, and others
like them,
met with important labor groups and with government
officials and
lobbied behind the scenes to better the conditions under
which
Portugal's new middle class had to work.
Data as of January 1993
|
