Portuguese Democracy at 50

In 2024, Portuguese democracy will celebrate its 50th anniversary, a regime consolidated from an abrupt rupture with a long authoritarian experience and with rare political actors in the democratization processes of the twentieth century. This chapter introduces the main dimensions of the transition and its uncertain path, and the main institutional legacies of the transition towards a consolidated democracy: civil-military relations; the underlying socialist constitution and semi-presidentialism as forms of consolidation through political parties and guided by a gradual and negotiated reversal of institutional legacies; and the more radical economic and social transformations that took place during the transition.