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Portugal The Middle Class
The middle class in Portugal had long been growing in
size
but grew more rapidly beginning in the early 1960s as
economic
growth quickened. Depending on the criteria used,
Portugal's
middle class at the beginning of the 1990s could account
for 25
to 30 percent of the population.
The traditional principle of political science states
that
the growth of a middle class brings greater social
stability and
better chances for the flourishing of democracy. However,
the
correlation of middle-class stability and democracy does
not
necessarily hold in Portugal. The reason for this lack of
correlation stems from the fact that "middle class" in
Portugal
has two definitions. One definition is based on social and
cultural criteria and the other on economics. The
definition
using economic criteria is the easiest to state: everyone
above a
certain income level but below another income level is
middle
class. This criterion would include some less wealthy
professionals, business people, soldiers, government
workers,
small farmers who own their own lands, clerks, and
better-off
industrial workers. This list includes a large variety of
persons
of diverse occupations with little connecting them in
terms of
education, family background, or political values.
According to the socio-cultural definition of middle
class,
persons belonging to the middle class do not engage in
manual
labor, disdain it, and tend to feel a sense of superiority
to
those below them in the social hierarchy. The
social-cultural
definition regards professionals, business and commercial
elements, military officers, and government workers as
middle
class, but not the enlisted, farmers, or industrial
workers, no
matter what their earnings. This latter definition of
middle
class results in a smaller group, more homogeneous in
outlook
than that resulting from purely economic criteria.
If the older, more traditional variety of middle class
with
its essentially aristocratic values (disdain for manual
labor,
for example) proved to be the prevailing model even in the
1990s,
Portugal would remain essentially a two-class society
divided
between those who work with their hands and those who do
not. A
two-class society increases chances for division, class
conflict,
and even civil war. By contrast, the emergence of a large
and
independent middle class defined by economic categories
rather
than socio-cultural traits favors the growth of social
pluralism
and political stability. As both definitions of the middle
class
were employed in Portugal, predicting the country's future
was
more difficult than elsewhere in Western Europe.
An indication that economic criteria had greater
validity
than in the past was that Portugal's middle class,
traditionally
deeply divided on a host of social and political issues,
increasingly voted on a more consistent basis for the
moderate,
centrist Social Democrat Party (Partido Social
Democrata--PSD).
The PSD had come to be seen by its foes, as well as its
supporters, as a "bourgeois" party. The Portuguese working
class,
in contrast, has voted increasingly for the Socialist
Party
(Partido Socialista--PS), although the Portuguese
Communist Party
(Partido Comunista Português--PCP) also won some of its
votes.
Data as of January 1993
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