Portugal's Parliament: An Organizational Analysis of Legislative Performance

Portugal's Parliament: An Organizational Analysis of Legislative PerformanceAuthor(s): Walter C. Opello, Jr.Source: Legislative Studies Quarterly, Vol. 11, No. 3 (Aug., 1986), pp. 291-319Published by: Comparative Legislative Research CenterStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/439839 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 09:26

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Comparative Legislative Research Center is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend accessto Legislative Studies Quarterly.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.192 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 09:26:02 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=clrc

http://www.jstor.org/stable/439839?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


WALTER C. OPELLO, JR. The University of Mississippi

Portugal's Parliament: An Organizational Analysis Of Legislative Performance

This article evaluates the performance of the Portuguese national legislature, the Assembly of the Republic. Accepting the argument that parliamentary performance is related to the degree to which a legislature is institutionalized as a corporate body, the article seeks to determine whether there has been any such institutionalization of the Assembly since its inception nearly a decade ago. The data show it to have experienced not institutionalization but, rather, disinstitutionalization, decay, and breakdown. It is incapable of transforming the broader political conflicts of Portuguese society into work- able public policy.

On April 25, 1974 a group of young military officers calling themselves the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) executed a nearly blood- less golpe de estado that deposed the government of Marcello Caetano and ended the comatose Portuguese dictatorship established by Ant6nio de Oliveira Salazar in 1932.' Despite considerable political turmoil and the rise and fall of six provisional governments, a constituent assembly wrote a new basic law relatively unhindered. The constitution, the sixth in Portuguese history,2 was promulgated on April 2, 1976, creating what Duverger (1980) has called a "semipresidential" system; that is, one in which a president, elected independently, shares governing power with a prime minister appointed from the legislature-in the Portuguese case, the Assembly of the Republic.3 In Portugal's first presidential election under the new constitution, Colonel (later General) Ramalho Eanes, the man credited with saving Portugal's nascent democracy from a left-wing golpe on November 25, 1975, was elected on June 27, 1976 with an over- whelming majority. Eanes was elected for a second term in December 1980.4

The first general election for the Assembly of the Republic was held on April 25, 1976, the second anniversary of the golpe. Although 14 parties put up lists of candidates, only 5 managed to win seats. The Socialist Party (PS) won 34.9% of the vote and 107 seats; the Com- munist Party (PCP), 14.4% and 40 seats; the Social Democrats (PSD),

LEGISLATIVE STUDIES QUARTERLY, XI, 3, August 1986 291



Walter C. Opello, Jr.

24.4% and 73 seats; the Christian Democrats (CDS), 15.9% and 42 seats; and the Popular Democratic Union (UDP), a small party of the extreme left, 1.7% of the ballots and 1 seat. In successive elections in 1979, 1980, and 1983, these parties (except the UDP, which lost its seat in 1983) have been returned to the Assembly in roughly the same proportion of votes and seats as they received in the 1976 balloting.5

As no party has won an absolute majority and no coalition government (of which there have been four) has survived for more than two years, Portugal has been, more or less, in a state of constant political and governmental crisis since 1974. This situation has been exacerbated by Portugal's semipresidential system, which granted to president and parliament almost equal governing power.6 The immediate result of this arrangement was conflict between the president on the one hand and Mario Soares, the first prime minister chosen under the new constitution. The long-term result was a revised constitution in 1981, which reduced the powers of the president and enhanced those of parliament.7 Portugal's present constitutional structure can now more appropriately be described as "semiparliamentary" rather than "semipresidential."

Will this shift in the balance of power toward parliament help resolve Portugal's problem of governability? Much will depend upon how effectively the Assembly makes policy. Therefore, this article will evaluate the Assembly's performance since its inception a decade ago. This evaluation will indicate what role the Assembly has played in the policy-making process and will explain Portugal's seemingly inter- minable crisis of governability. It should also produce insights to legislative development in emergent democracies.

Approach

Legislatures in new democracies, even when marginal to the making of public policy, may perform the useful and significant function of "displacement." That is, "minimal" legislatures (Mezey, 1972) remove political conflict from the streets and relocate it onto the floor of the parliament, where it is dissipated via speechmaking and other forms of symbolic activity.

While a minimal parliament is better than no legislature at all, such a parliament is insufficient for meaningful and durable democracy. In order for democracy to thrive, legislatures must eventually compel the executive to govern through them by governing with them. To be effective and durable, legislatures must be more than "councils of convenience," where various political factions meet to shout at one another on the floor of parliament. They must become "councils of consent,"

292



Portugal's Parliament

places where competing factions meet to resolve their differences and define common objectives (Sisson and Snowiss, 1979). Viable legislatures make a democracy more stable and durable by focusing public attention on politics, by imparting to the citizenry a sense of meaningful participa- tion in and influence on public policy, and by promoting general atti- tudes of support for the system (Loewenberg, 1971, 1973). Moreover, in highly pluralistic societies, viable legislatures can help integrate disparate ethnic and communal groups (Jewell and Eldridge, 1977).

Thus, the stability and durability of fledgling democracies depend in part upon whether their legislatures are councils of consent which exercise some control over public policy making. To exercise such control, legislatures must be political actors in their own right, with fixed roles, norms, behavioral expectations, and traditions, actors whose decisions carry a separate meaning and force. Institutionalized legislatures can and do impose order on the inchoate world of political conflict by limiting factionalism and private political maneuvers (March and Olsen, 1984).

The study of legislative institutionalization has followed two separate research strategies. One has been the analysis of legislative roles. Inspired by the work of Wahlke, Eulau, Buchanan, and Ferguson (1962) on U.S. state legislatures, role analysis has had great utility for the study of legislatures as institutions, especially in developing countries (Jewell, 1970, pp. 494-500). This research ascertains what role concepts exist among members of a legislature and determines whether the legislators agree on those concepts. According to Kim (1973, pp. 398-400), the level of agreement determines institutional viability and performance in three ways. First, role orientations define the functions a parliament can perform. Second, the stability and effectiveness of the legislature depend upon role consensus. Without a minimal level of agreement, the role cannot be said to exist, and, as roles are the building blocks of institutions (Katz and Kahn, 1966), the legislature itself cannot be said to exist as an institution. Third, the degree of role consensus affects the degree of autonomy of the legislature. Without roles specific to itself, the legislature cannot be distinguished from other organizations and therefore is not institutionalized. From the perspective of role analysis, then, a legislature would be considered institutionalized if it were "an interrelated system of roles that orients the activities of those individuals forming a part of the legislative system" (Hoskins, 1975, p. 144).

The other research strategy has been the analysis of the organizational attributes of legislatures. Heavily influenced by the work of Eisen- stadt (1966) and Huntington (1969), this approach shifts the level of analysis from individual legislators to the legislative organization itself.

293




According to Sisson (1973, p. 19), a parliament is institutionalized when the "existence and persistence of valued rules, procedures, and patterns of behavior which enable the accommodation of new configurations of political claimants and/or demands" can be detected. The organizational attributes of a parliament exist independently of the members who serve in it and of the particular issues with which it is concerned (Loewenberg and Patterson, 1979, p. 20). Although they differ slightly in emphasis, those who have employed this approach generally agree that the attributes which define institutionalization and viability are the legislature's degree of autonomy, complexity, and universalism. "Auton- omy" refers to the extent to which the legislature is structurally distinct from other political institutions and social groups. "Complexity" refers to the extent to which the structures internal to the legislature are differentiated one from the other and operate according to specialized rules and a division of labor based on widely shared role expectations. "Universalism" refers to the extent to which internal rules and decision making follow distinctive procedures and precedents and not personalis- tic, particularistic interests (Sisson, 1973; Polsby, 1968; Loewenberg, 1973; Jewell, 1973; Jewell and Eldridge, 1977, p. 274). A legislature which is autonomous, complex, and universalistic could be said to be institutionalized, and its members would feel an esprit de corps and iden- tity with the organization.

Most of the substantive, comparative research on legislative development has followed the role analysis strategy. For example, roles have been studied by Hopkins (1970) in the Tanzanian Bunge, by Hoskins (1971) in the Colombian National Legislature, by Mezey (1972) in the Thai Legislature, and by Kim and Woo (1975) in the Korean National Assembly. However, these studies presented no evidence that the activities of legislators formed a set of interrelated roles. Nor did they present data which indicated the existence of values, widely shared norms, rules, procedures, and patterns of behavior specific to the parliament. Most of these legislatures have either fallen victim to military intervention-which is, according to Huntington (1969), the clearest indication of the lack of institutionalization-or have become so dominated and penetrated by outside forces, such as executives or political parties, that it is impossible to speak of them as having any autonomy as organizations and therefore as institutionalized.

One cannot assume that role concepts identified from question- naires are in fact roles which constitute the building blocks of the legislature. It must be shown that they are specific to the legislature itself, are learned, and orient the behavior of members. It is doubtful that the roles identified in the above-cited literature were roles in the sense of those

294




identified by Wahlke et al. (1962) and recently by Searing (1985) in the British parliament-that is, aspects of the internal division of labor specific to the institution, traditionally derived and to a great extent learned, which orient the behavior of members. Moreover, it can be argued that the roles identified in at least some of the above research were little more than response variations due to the class, status, and educational differences of the legislators, not differences determined by roles.8

To avoid these pitfalls, this article approaches the viability and performance of Portugal's Assembly of the Republic at the macro-level, examining its organizational attributes-that is, its degree of autonomy, complexity, and universalism. There is ilo reason to expect a parliam- ment only about a decade old to have achieved a significant degree of viability and autonomy. However, it is of vital importance to determine which way the wind is blowing, so to speak, toward or away from institutionalization. Is Portugal's parliament a minimal legislature? If so, are there any signs it is developing toward greater autonomy, complexity, and universalism?

Autonomy

In amorphous, undifferentiated organizations, members enter and exit easily and frequently, there is little membership continuity, and members do not as a whole consider themselves to be full-time profes- sionals. The opposite is true in differentiated organizations (Polsby, 1968). Differentiation means that the organization has, to use Polsby's descriptive, "hardened" its boundaries and is relatively impervious to penetration by outside forces. What evidence is there, if any, of harden- ing boundaries in the Assembly of the Republic?

One indicator would be carryovers from election to election. If the proportion of deputies who return to the Assembly has increased across the three general elections held since 1976, then the conclusion can be drawn that entry is becoming more difficult. Table 1 displays the percentage of deputies elected to the first and subsequent legislatures who carried over to those following. The turnover rate from election to election has been extremely high, being on average 50.7% of the membership of the Assembly. From the 1976 to the 1979 election, 46.6% of the deputies carried over; from 1979 to 1980, 63.2%; and from 1980 to 1983, 42.4%. The data also show that the trend across these three elections is toward fewer and fewer carryovers. Thus, of the deputies who were elected in 1976 only 46.6% returned in 1979; 39.2% in 1980; and 24.8% in 1983.

295




TABLE 1 Carryovers of Portuguese Deputies, 1976-1983

(in percentages)

Year First Elected Year

Reelected 1976 1979 1980

1979 46.6 1980 39.2 63.2 1983 24.8 36.0 42.4

The data in Table 1 indicate quite clearly, then, that the "collec- tive experience" of the Portuguese Assembly, as measured by membership continuity, is extremely shallow. An enumeration of individuals elected to the Assembly more than once reveals that 42 individuals had been elected twice, 44 thrice, and 39 four times. This means that only 125 different individuals have been elected more than once. Moreover, only 39 of those who were elected in 1976 were reelected in 1979, 1980, and 1983.

There are several possible explanations for this high turnover rate. Since Portuguese deputies are elected from lists drawn up by the various parties, turnover could reflect party decisions about the position of individuals on each list-high in one election, low in a subsequent one. It could, of course, also reflect fluctuations in the percentage of the vote for the various parties. It might also reflect efforts by the parties to build up support for themselves through the circulation of incumbents. Finally, it might reflect the problems the parties face recruiting people to stand for election. Of these explanations, the last probably explains most of the variance but certainly not all. There is some evidence that getting elected and staying in office is not much valued in Portugal (Opello, 1978). What continuity of membership there is in the Assembly is therefore pro- vided by a cadre of party leaders (the 39 individuals elected four times) and a small reservoir of party activists from the party outside of parliament, which supply a core of deputies on a rotational basis. The remain- ing deputies, the great bulk, are recruited anew for each election.

The data thus far presented show a very high turnover from election to election. But, what of the movement of deputies after elections? Portuguese deputies may leave parliament any number of times, to take up posts in government or on account of illness, urgent professional obligations, or party work. Vacancies thus created are filled from the list of candidates from which the deputy was elected. Table 2 presents the number of substitutions during each of the sessions of the three legisla-

296




TABLE 2 Substitutions of Portuguese Deputies, By Legislative Session

Number of Average Length Session Substitutions (in days)

First Legislature First Session 70 186 Second Session 72 162 Third Session 35 213 Fourth Session 79 84

Second Legislature First Session 189 78 Second Session 329 29 Third Session 139 35

Third Legislature First Session 576 33

tures. This number has steadily increased over time and attained an astronomical level during the first session of the Third Legislature. Sub- stitutions made over the eight sessions totaled 1,489. Of these, 185 allowed deputies to take up posts in national and local government or in the parastatal sector; 84 filled vacancies created by resignations and 5 by death. This means that well over 80%o of the substitutions have been relatively brief and temporary.

Table 2 shows that the average number of days for substitutions has gradually declined since the first session of the First Legislature, being only 33 days during the last session before this research was begun. Coupled with the data on numbers of substitutions, these data show clearly that, as time has passed, more and more deputies have been tem- porarily substituted for shorter and shorter periods. Indeed, beginning in the fourth session of the First Legislature, it was not uncommon for deputies to request and be authorized substitution for as little as one day!

Are the same individuals exiting and entering the Assembly multiple times? Assembly records indicate that, for the most part, the figure of 1,489 substitutions represents different individuals. When a substitute deputy enters the Assembly for the first time, even if only for one day, he must complete a biographical statement that is kept on file by the Assembly's staff. At the time of this research, there were 1,281 different biographical statements in that file, a number quite close to the total number of 1,215 temporary substitutions (1,489, less the 185 who took up posts in government, 84 who resigned, and 5 who died). This

297




means that no less than 1,281 different substitute deputies have filled the 250 seats of the Assembly at some time since 1976.

These data indicate that the turnover of deputies is exceedingly high and that entry, exit, and reentry to the Assembly are exceedingly easy. In fact, the trends in the data show an alarming movement toward less and less differentiation of the Assembly's boundaries and greater and greater penetration by outside forces.

In interviews with numerous deputies and parliamentary leaders, two explanations for the high rate of substitutions were given. First, deputies have professions and businesses outside of the Assembly which they must attend to, owing a responsibility to their clients and employees. Second, by requesting temporary substitutions deputies avoid breaching parliamentary group discipline when their personal views were not in accord with those of their parliamentary group. This, in part, explains the trend toward more substitutions for shorter periods of time during the last three sessions. During these sessions, the Assembly discussed revisions to the constitution and passed several laws in a highly emo- tional area, abortion. Whatever the reasons, it is possible to conclude that Portugal's parliament can not guard its own boundaries. It has almost no membership continuity and membership in it does not constitute a full-time profession, except for a handful of individuals. The Assembly, therefore, can not manage itself as an independent organization.

What outside forces, then, penetrate the legislature and deprive it of autonomy? Among deputies, the basic unit of organization is the parliamentary group, the members of each party represented in the Assembly. These groups control the internal affairs of the Assembly through the Conference of Parliamentary Group Representatives, which meets once each week with the president of the Assembly to set the agenda and make other decisions. As Table 3 indicates, the number of parliamentary groups has gradually increased since 1976. This increase is not due to more parties winning seats on their own. As noted above, the party system has remained remarkably stable over the last decade. In some cases, the leading deputies of certain parliamentary groups have bolted to form their own groups. In other cases, major parties have included individuals from electorally insignificant parties or disaffected deputies from rival parties on their electoral lists in an attempt to broaden electoral appeal, with the understanding that after the election these individuals would be allocated a certain number of seats and allowed to constitute an independent parliamentary group. The Indepen- dent Social Democrat Association (ASDI) and the Left Union for Social Democracy (UEDS) were groups of dissatisfied deputies from the PSD

298



TABLE 3

Number of Seats for the Parliamentary Groups, by Session

Parliamentary Group

Social Democrat Party (PSD)

Socialist Party (PS)

Christian Democrats (CDS)

Communist Party (PCP)

Popular Democratic Union (UDP)a

Popular Democratic Movement (MDP)

Popular Monarchist Party (PPM)

Independent Social Democrat Association

(ASDI)

Left Union for Social Democracy (UEDS)

Independents

Total

Third First Legislature Second Legislature Legislature

First Second Third Fourth First Second Third First Session Session Session Session Session Session Session Session

73 73 73

104 104 104

41 41 41

41 41 41

1 1 1

80 82 82 82

74 66 66 66

43 46 46 46

44 39 39 39

1 1 1 1

3 2 2 2

5 6 6 6

4 4 4

4 4 4

3 3 3

263 263 263 250 250 250 250

ut 0:

?

(TQ

c_

CD '-? T,,J

75

94

30

41

3

4

3

250

aNot strictly speaking a parliamentary group.




and PS, respectively, who declared their independence in the fourth session of the First Legislature, organized themselves into "parties," and in the 1980 elections were placed on PS electoral lists which contested the election as the Socialist and Republican Front (FRS). The Popular Democratic Movement (MDP), which can trace its roots back to the pre- 1974 struggle against the Salazar-Caetano dictatorship, was integrated on PCP lists which contested the election as the United People's Action (APU) banner. The Popular Monarchist Party (PPM) was included on PSD and CDS joint lists as one of the Democratic Alliance (AD) coalition partners. This practice has only fragmented the Assembly into more and smaller parliamentary groups, some merely elite factions which fancy themselves political parties.

The parliamentary groups of the four major parties are essentially direct extensions of those parties into the interior of the Assembly; there is almost no distinction between the external party and the parliamentary party. The leadership of both parliamentary and external parties is merged and the party within parliament is expected to play a sub- ordinate role. The external party controls the parliamentary group and individual deputies through its power to deny renomination to those who do not conform to party expectations and break parliamentary group discipline. Those who defy the group are forced into the status of 'independent," which effectively denies these deputies the benefits of parliamentary group membership. If the dissident group is large enough, it is possible to coalesce into a new parliamentary group, as did ASDI and UEDS.

Conflict between the external party and the parliamentary group has been almost exclusively between the top leadership of both entities and has been a major reason for governmental instability since 1976. Unlike Great Britain or the United States, where legislatures appeared early and institutionalized themselves before the advent of universal suf- frage and the mass party, Portugal has no strong parliamentary tradition and the legislature and mass parties appeared almost simultaneously after April 25, 1974. Portugal's four major parties are all more or less centralized and relatively powerful national organizations which dominate and control the political life of the country. The parties are much stronger organizationally than the Assembly. The Assembly is in no way autonomous from these parties and is, in essence, little more than a "council of convenience" for the parties and their leaders as they struggle with one another for control of the "situation."9 Moreover, interview data suggest that the degree of penetration by the parties has actually increased, the Assembly having become more fragmented, amorphous, and subject to outside political forces.'0

300




TABLE 4 Number of Individuals Who Have Served in Key Positions in the

Assembly, By Number of Sessions Served

Number of Sessions Served

Position 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total

President or Vice-President 5 4 1 3 1 0 0 1 15

Secretary 42 17 9 3 0 1 0 1 73

Parliamentary Group President 17 2 1 3 1 0 0 1 25

Complexity

To determine whether the Assembly is a complex organization, it is necessary to ask whether its internal structures and positions have become specialized according to function and jurisdiction and whether its key positions are staffed by deputies who have acquired at least some seniority-that is, after serving a period of apprenticeship. It is also important to know what proportion of its overall resources the Assembly allocates to itself for internal self-management. The key subunits and positions that need to be analyzed are the president and bureau of the Assembly, the committees and their presidents, and the parliamentary groups and their leaders.

Table 4 shows that 15 individuals have served as president or vice-president of the Assembly. Of these, five have been president and the remainder vice-presidents. No president has served more than two complete terms, although several vice-presidents have stayed in their positions longer, one having served for the entire eight sessions of the Assembly's existence.1' The informal rule of the Assembly is that the president will come from the party with the most seats in the chamber or, if there is a coalition government, the presidency will rotate each session among the members of the coalition. The president, however, is not in any way a partisan leader. Presidents moderate and coordinate the parliamentary groups, they do not lead them. Presidents do not have any decisional authority beyond what is granted by the parliamentary groups in the Conference of Parliamentary Group Representatives. Despite this lack of institutional authority, however, the parliamentary groups seek to have one of their own in the job because of the prestige it lends the party.'2 The presidency and vice-presidencies of the Assembly are not occupational specialties which are filled after a period of apprenticeship

301




according to seniority. Turnover is high and lateral entry common. No vice-president has ever become president.

Table 4 also indicates that the service of secretaries of the bureau follows the same pattern observed for president and vice-presidents. Well over half of the 73 individuals who have filled the position of secretary served during only one session. Again, only one of the secretaries has served throughout the eight sessions of the Assembly since 1976.13 Turn- over is very high and the position of secretary is generally not seen as an occupational specialty or a steppingstone to a vice-presidency.

Thus, the presidency and bureau as subunits of the Assembly do not compose an Assembly leadership and do not operate independently of the parliamentary groups according to a set of specific internal rules. They are dominated and controlled by the parliamentary groups who divide up these offices among themselves on a proportional basis. There has been no persistent leadership over time specific to the Assembly itself.

The degree of internal complexity can also be judged by the extent to which the Assembly's committees are specialized agencies with fixed jurisdictions and more or less permanent leadership. Unlike the U.S. Congress, in which bills are automatically referred to committees where they are considered before being discussed by the whole house, Portugal's Assembly reverses the legislative process. Although bills are sent to one of a number of committees when introduced into parliament, they are not debated and passed in that venue before appearing in the whole house. In Portugal's parliament a bill must pass the whole house first (generalidade) after which it may go back to committee for detailed consideration (especialidade).'4 The committees are empowered only to work out the details of compromises made in the plenary or to polish up the language of the bill. They can not alter legislation unless authorized to do so by the whole house. After detailed consideration in committee, the bill returns to the floor for final approval (vota_ao globalfinal).

Table 5 lists the standing specialized committees of the Assem- bly. It is clear from the table that the number of committees has varied since the Assembly came into being. For the first three sessions, the Assembly was organized into 11 committees. In the fourth session, the Committee on Education, Science, and Culture was broken into three different committees (Education; Science and Research; and Culture and Environment) and seven new committees were added: Social Com- munication, Commerce and Tourism, Industrial Energy and Transporta- tion, Public Works and Habitation, European Integration, Condition of Women, and Youth. This arrangement endured through the Second Legislature. Beginning with the first session of the Third Legislature, all

302



TABLE 5 Standing Specialized Committees of the Assembly of the Republic

First Legislature Second Legislature Third Legislature

1. Constitutional Affairs 2. Rights, Liberties, and Guarantees 3. Labor 4. Social Security and Health 5. Education, Science, and Culture 6. Economy, Finance and Planning 7. Agriculture and Fishing 8. National Defense 9. Foreign Affairs and Emigration

10. Equipment and Environment 11. Internal Administration and Local

Power

1. Constitutional Affairs 2. Rights, Liberties, and Guarantees 3. Labor 4. Social Security and Health 5. Economy, Finance, and Planning 6. Agriculture and Fishing 7. National Defense 8. Foreign Affairs and Emigration 9. Social Equipment

10. Internal Administration and Local Power

11. Social Communication 12. Education 13. Science and Research 14. Commerce and Tourism 15. Industrial Energy and

Transportation 16. Public Works and Habitation 17. Culture and Environment 18. European Integration 19. Condition of Women 20. Youth

1. Constitutional Affairs, Rights, Liberties and Guarantees

2. Labor 3. Social Security and Health 4. Social Security, Health, Family 5. Education, Science, and Culture 6. Economy, Finance, and Planning 7. Agriculture and Ocean 8. National Defense 9. Foreign Affairs and Emigration

10. Social Equipment and Environment 11. Internal Administration, Local

Power 12. European Integration

IV 0

v:

f-+

&3

r-

.

:5

rF f-*-

t




but one of the seven new committees was dropped, the committees on Constitutional Affairs and Rights and Liberties merged, and the Com- mittee on Education, Science, and Culture was reconstituted.

These changes suggest that the committee structure of the Assembly is in flux and subject to modification according to the subject matter before the Assembly at a particular time. Thus, for example, of the seven new committees created in the fourth session of the First Legis- lature, only the Committee on European Integration survives because Portugal's entrance into the E.E.C. is of continuing concern. These changes also suggest considerable confusion about the jurisdictional boundaries of some of the committees. Indeed, bills are frequently sent to committees which, after initial consideration, send them back to the president of the Assembly, having found that the subject matter of the bill did not conform to its jurisdiction.

An analysis of the tenure of the presidents (chairmen) of the committees revealed that it was unusual for an individual to stay in the position for much more than one session. There was no evidence that membership on the committee or the occupancy of a committee vice- presidency was necessary before becoming president. Although presidents are formally elected by their committees, these positions are actually allocated among the parliamentary groups according to the partisan make-up of the Assembly. As committees must be reconstituted every session, they are not dominated over time by a single person or small group of individuals. Although the parliamentary groups attempt to place individuals on committees who have expertise within the committee's jurisdiction, the committees have not become highly specialized nor have their members become technically competent. Since there is nothing especially prestigious about being on a particular committee, turnover is high, in fact exceedingly high.'5 There is no special incentive to stay on a committee to learn its way of conducting business and its particular behavioral habits, such as they may be. The parliamentary groups select their committee presidents and instruct them, as well as ordinary committee members, on what to do and how to vote in committee meetings.

Thus, the committees have no independent means to affect the legislative process and are composed around the specific issues which happen to be before the Assembly during a particular period of time. Consequently, they are microcosms of the broader political conflicts which intrude into Assembly. The committees have not grown in importance or specialization since 1976; hence, one cannot speak of movement toward increasing complexity within Portugal's parliament.'6

But, what of the parliamentary groups? Clearly these are the

304




subunits of the Assembly that matter. It is therefore important to know whether the leadership of these groups has been stable. Table 4 shows that the pattern of high leadership turnover found within the Assembly's other subunits is repeated within the parliamentary groups. Nearly 70% of the 25 individuals who have served as president of the various parliamentary groups served only one session. Again, only one individual has occupied this post through all eight sessions of the Assembly.'7 This suggests, as did the high turnover in the presidencies of the various committees, that the presidency of a parliamentary group is also not a highly desirable long-term occupational specialty within the Assembly. The presidency of a parliamentary group is a highly vulnerable job, since presidents are also members of the leadership of the various parties outside of parliament. Consequently, they are directly exposed to, influenced by, and involved in the flux of individual political alliances and the maneuvers of other party luminaries contending for control of their own parties and for control of the "situation." The direct intrusion of party politics into the Assembly via the parliamentary groups is a particularly acute problem in Portugal because the parties themselves are so riven by factionalism and personalism. As the Assembly is little more than a convenient location for the conduct of such struggles,'8 the pattern has been one of the rise and fall of parliamentary group presidents, not long-term service in the position.

Finally, complexity can be indicated by the proportion of its resources (personnel and money) which a parliament allocates for its internal self-management. Table 6 indicates that, although the overall budget of the Assembly has increased about fourfold since 1978, the proportion of financial resources going specifically to the management of the Assembly itself (i.e., parliamentary services) has declined from about one-third (29% in 1978) to about one-tenth (13.8% in 1984) of global resources. Although there has been a microscopic increase in the percentage of money allocated to the president's cabinet, this represents only about .5% of the total. As can be seen from the data, a large and ever increasing proportion of the budget has been going either to entities essentially outside of parliament or to the deputies themselves-that is, to political party subsidies,"9 travel, salaries, and transfers to organizations such as the Press Council, National Elections Commission, Ombudsman, and the like.20 The proportion going to the cabinets of the parliamentary groups (hence, to the parties) has also increased from about 1.5% of the budget to about 4%. Thus, a decreasing percentage of the Assembly's budget has been allocated to services intrinsic to the internal self-management of the organization itself.

Thus, it is clear that the internal structure of the Assembly is not

305



TABLE 6 Budgets of the Assembly of the Republic, 1978-1984

(in thousands of escudos)

1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984

Rubric N % N % N % N % N % N % N %

President's Cabinet 987 .3 1,098 .3 1,428 .3 1,698 .3 2,283 .3 5,465 .5 6,800 .5 Bureau 557 .2 599 .2 695 .1 801 .1 6,595 .8 11,070 .9 13,400 1.0 Parliamentary Servicesa 99,352 29.0 106,454 26.6 120,217 23.6 143,866 22.2 160,837 18.9 168,241 13.9 176,880 13.8

Deputies Salariesb 87,593 25.6 101,000 25.3 119,040 23.3 148,000 22.9 265,510 31.2 354,000 29.1 393,500 30.7

Parliamentary Group Cabinetsc 5,817 1.7 6,635 1.7 10,140 2.0 15,975 2.5 21,873 2.6 39,900 3.3 54,500 4.3

Contributionsd 500 .2 500 .1 500 .1 500 .1 500 .1 1,100 .1 1,300 .1 Dislocationse 32,260 9.4 36,000 9.0 55,000 10.8 80,000 12.4 110,000 12.9 162,000 13.3 175,000 13.7 Subsidies to the Partiesf 100,000 29.2 127,000 31.8 175,000 34.3 226,000 34.9 271,000 31.9 317,000 26.1 320,000 25.0 Transferss 15,216 4.4 20,710 5.2 27,980 5.5 30,000 4.6 41,402 4.9 155,786 12.8 140,000 10.9 Total 342,432 400,000 510,000 646,840 850,000 1,214,562 1,281,380

aIncludes benefits, consumables, social services, retirement contributions, etc.

bIncludes senhas de presen~a, individual travel, perquisites, retirement.

CIncludes salaries and benefits of parliamentary group staff.

dFor membership in the Interparliamentary Union and Association of Parliamentary Secretaries-general.

eDeputy travel on official missions.

fCalculated on the basis of 1/225 of the minimum wage for each vote obtained by each party with seats in the Assembly. gTo support the press, literacy, elections, and social communications councils and the ombudsman.

o 0 0',

f-t el

CD

?

-

x. ?_




well differentiated. The presidency of the Assembly, vice-presidencies, secretariats of the bureau, and committee chairmanships are not in any way occupational specialties unique to the organization and are not filled according to seniority or after a period of apprenticeship. The committees are penetrated by the parliamentary groups and have no independent capacity to contribute to the legislative process. Moreover, there seems to be considerable confusion about how many committees there ought to be and where their jurisdictional boundaries ought to lie. Even the parliamentary groups, which in essence control the other subunits of the Assembly, are themselves dominated by the political parties outside the Assembly. The overlap of parliamentary group leadership with external party leadership has meant that leadership quarrels and factional maneuvers have intruded into the Assembly, making the leadership of the parliamentary groups highly unstable. All of this causes the Assem- bly to reflect almost perfectly the political conflicts and leadership struggles in the broader political environment and, according to Jewell (1973), clearly indicate that the Assembly is not an independent, corporate organization.

Universalism

The final organizational aspect to be examined is universalism- the extent to which deputies of the Assembly agree on the parliamentary rules of the game, the degree to which strict party voting has been breached over the last decade, the extent to which the norms of reciproc- ity have developed, and the degree to which the Assembly can claim and demand the primary loyalty and good behavior of its deputies. After the evidence thus far presented on autonomy and complexity, the expectation is that these universalistic behavioral norms ought to be low and, indeed, the data bear out this expectation. It has already been shown that seniority does not determine the choice of committee and parliamentary group presidents nor are internal elections to committees decided on their merits. All such decisions are made strictly in accordance with partisan considerations. To take into account partisan differences, the Assembly allocates chairmanships, seats on committees, vice-presidencies, secre- taryships, etc., according to an internal decisional rule which gives representation to all parliamentary groups in direct proportion to their partisan strength on the Assembly floor. There is no arena internal to the Assembly where this proportional decisional rule is not applied. While such a decisional rule allows bitterly opposed political parties and ideo- logical enemies to coexist, it hinders universalistic decision making.

307




Although there is widespread agreement within the Assembly on the proportional decisional rule, there is much less on the procedural rules governing the operation of the organization itself. The Assembly does have written rules (the Regimento) and other documents which pur- port to govern the behavior of deputies and staff (Estatuto dos Deputados, and Regulamento). However, since 1976, the rules of the Assembly have been amended several times and, in 1983, extensively revised. Moreover, many of the revisions were not made to control the behavior of individuals but to make it easier for the Assembly to function in light of its penetration by outside forces.21

An analysis of votes taken since 1976 on all bills, both government (propostas de lei) and parliamentary (projectos de lei) shows that voting in the Assembly has been strictly along party lines, the parliamentary groups always voting in blocks. Moreover, a reading of various debates across time revealed no discernible increase in the courtesy and "aura of friendliness," to use Polsby's words, in the tone of speeches. Indeed, one of the recent changes in the internal rules of the Assembly permits a deputy to challenge, in a formal way, another whom he believes has besmirched his reputation (ofensa a honra) during debate. The record of the debates has been from the beginning and continues to be sprinkled with name calling, derisive laughter, whistles, catcalls, and general antagonism. It is obvious that debates in the plenary sessions are seen as opportunities to shout at political enemies, not resolve differences and work toward common objectives.

Clearly, Portugal's parliament has not moved toward universalistic decision making and can not claim the primary loyalty and good behavior of its deputies. Interviews with numerous deputies of all parliamentary groups showed that they overwhelmingly see themselves principally as delegates of the political parties, to whom they owe ultimate loyalty. The function of each deputy is to advance the interests of his political party, and he takes voting cues exclusively from the parliamentary group. On only two occasions since 1976 have deputies on the whole been released from parliamentary group discipline, in votes on abortion and its depenalization. Nonetheless, deputies had a very strong tendency to vote in parliamentary group blocks, with relatively few defections. This means the party leadership indirectly controls deputies even when they are free to act alone.

Interviews with deputies also revealed that Portuguese legislators are not only aware that they are behaving in a highly partisan fashion but accept such behavior as legitimate and required of a deputy. The idea of an unattached, independent deputy makes little sense and is considered alien to the Portuguese political context. Like deputies in Italy (di Palma,

308




1977), Portuguese deputies clearly see themselves as responsible to the parties, not to parliaments or their constituents. The electorate for them is essentially the rank and file of the party at the local level, and the party gives structure and unity to the needs and demands of their constituents. Moreover, none of the informants saw the Assembly as having any independence from the parties, nor decisional authority in its own right. None esteemed the Assembly nor expressed loyalty to it as an organizational unity.22

Decisional Effectiveness

The question now arises how effective the Assembly is in making policy. This question can be answered by evaluating the contribution of the Assembly to the substance of public policy in Portugal over the last decade. There are several ways to make such an evaluation. The most straightforward would be simply to count the amount of legislation introduced and calculate the percentage of bills that actually passed. Pre- sumably, a legislature which processes a large quantity of bills is per- forming well. As di Palma (1977) has pointed out, however, this approach suffers from the notion that "quantity equals quality"-that is, that a large amount of legislation means important legislation is being passed. The best method of evaluation would judge legislative output by the extent to which it actually seeks to deal with the economic and social problem in the society. Such bills, which might be few in number, would indicate that the legislature is indeed an effective decisional body, one which plays an important role in the policy formation process.

Di Palma (1976) has developed a method for evaluating legislative output which takes into account the problem of quality. He suggests that legislation which involves higher levels of aggregation and agreement among deputies is indicative of a more effective legislative institution. Such legislation would be a measure of the legislature's independent ability to contribute to public policy formation. The evaluation here seeks to determine the extent to which Portugal's Assembly of the Republic produces legislation and the degree to which that legislation aggregates and accommodates diverse interests.

To ascertain what has happened to bills introduced into the Assembly since its creation in 1976, Table 7 displays the disposition of all bills introduced from the first session of the First Legislature to the first session of the Third Legislature in 1984, the year this research was conducted.

Two interesting patterns can be observed in the table which impinge upon the question of decisional effectiveness. First, there is a

309



w

TABLE 7 0

Disposition of Legislation in the Portuguese Assembly (in percentages)

Government Bills Private Bills

Not Not Session Debated Rejected Approved (N) Debated Rejected Approved (N)

First Legislature

First Session 28.4 4.2 67.4 129 41.3 17.3 41.3 75

Second Session 41.6 2.3 55.4 84 27.2 25.4 47.2 55

Third Session 57.1 4.7 38.0 63 71.1 5.4 23.3 201

Fourth Session 61.3 0.9 37.7 106 94.2 2.4 2.9 206

Second Legislature

First Session 42.3 0.0 57.6 59 77.7 8.1 14.1 234

Second Session 56.1 0.0 43.8 73 84.2 7.4 8.3 108

Third Session 77.7 0.0 22.2 9 88.4 7.6 3.8 26

Third Legislature

First Session 39.0 0.0 61.6 87 75.3 3.4 21.2 381

C-+

(D

(T) ?-t 0 (3




clear tendency for fewer and fewer bills to be introduced over time. Second, the success rate of government bills is substantially higher than that for private bills-that is, those introduced by the parliamentary groups. Over the eight sessions studied, the government's legislative success rate has varied between a high of 67% and a low of 27%o. On the other hand, the success rate for private bills has gradually declined from a high of 47% in the second session of the First Legislature to a low of only 3% during the third session of the Second Legislature. While the 21% success rate for private bills during the first session of the Third Legislature suggests a reversal of this tendency, this is more apparent than real, as will be made clear below.

These trends in legislative success rates suggest that, initially, the government and the Assembly were more equal partners in the policy making process, but that gradually the Assembly has been bypassed by successive governments. Table 7 shows very clearly that the success rate for legislation which is actually put on the Assembly's agenda is quite high, especially for government bills. In other words, few bills are actually voted down by the Assembly; they fail because they are simply not ever considered. In fact, no government bill has been rejected since the first session of the Second Legislature, and only 1 to 4%0 were rejected during the First Legislature. The government's agenda rate is also considerably higher than that of the parliamentary groups. Essen- tially, the government decides elsewhere and seeks from the Assembly formal approval, which it gains by controlling the agenda of the Assembly.

But what of the quality of legislation? What are the trends in the level of aggregation of legislation introduced by the Assembly, especially private bills? Even though only a few private bills are passed, these may be of high quality; that is, they may involve a high degree of agreement and aggregation among the parliamentary groups and their deputies.

In order to find out, di Palma's method for determining level of aggregation was applied to legislation introduced into the Assembly from 1976 to 1984. Legislation was classified as to whether the subject of the bill was the national community, a composite and large sector of that community organized around broad but definable activities and institutions, or smaller more homogeneous groups or sectors of the national community engaged in unique and/or specialized activities.

As can be seen in Table 8 government legislation is overwhelmingly more national in scope and therefore more aggregative than are private bills. Only 9.5% of government bills across the eight sessions had a sectoral focus. Thus, 90.5% of all government legislation was aimed at the national community or a large sector organized around broad activi-

311




TABLE 8 Level of Aggregation of Legislation Introduced in the Assembly,

by Session (in percentages)

Government Bills Private Bills

Session Sectoral National Sectoral National

First Legislature First Session 10.9 89.1 13.3 86.7 Second Session 20.2 79.8 18.2 81.8 Third Session 1.6 98.4 57.7 42.3 Fourth Session 15.1 84.9 50.9 49.1

Second Legislature First Session 10.2 89.2 54.3 45.7 Second Session 6.8 93.2 28.7 71.3 Third Session 0.0 100.0 50.0 50.0

Third Legislature First Session 11.5 88.5 47.8 52.2

ties. Private bills were much more likely to be of both national and sectoral concern. On average 59.9% of private bills across the eight sessions were of national focus, while 40.1% were sectoral. With respect to private bills, the data in Table 8 reveal that the ratio between national and sectoral focus was strongly in favor of the former during the first and second sessions of the First Legislature.

What is the nature of government legislation and what is the content of the large amount of sectoral legislation introduced by the parliamentary groups? The analysis of legislation revealed that 64% of all government bills formally requested authorization to legislate in areas reserved constitutionally to the national legislature-that is, authoriza- tions to, in effect, carry out the domestic and foreign policy of the government for the national community. The sectorally-oriented legislation of the parliamentary groups, dubbed bagatela by Portuguese deputies, almost always sought to elevate a village to the status of municipality. Occasionally, this legislation sought to demarcate and give official status to a particular wine-growing region. The purpose of such bagatela is, in essence, electoral enhancement, since the number of electoral offices available increases when a village is elevated to a municipality. The parliamentary groups introduce bills changing the status of those locales where they are certain of their electoral strength or where the group's support for such a change will enhance its strength.

312




As can be seen from Table 9, bagatela account for a major proportion of the legislation introduced by the parliamentary groups, especially the four electorally significant ones. It was the wholesale passage of such bagatela which boosted the rate of success for private bills (see Table 7) during the first session of the Third Legislature to 21.2%o from a low of 3.8% during the previous session. Seventy percent of the private bills passed that session were bagatela, all of which passed unanimously on the same day without debate.

This brief discussion of legislative performance has buttressed the findings of the above organizational analysis, showing quite clearly that the Assembly has been marginal in the policy formation process and has made no significant contribution to public policy in Portugal since coming into being a decade ago.

Conclusions

Portugal's Assembly of the Republic shows no sign of becoming institutionalized and contributes minimally if at all to the policy process. The Assembly has not survived the onslaught of the political parties, which have gradually conquered more and more of its terrain and have come to control its every operation. The Assembly may be a convenient arena for the conduct of the political struggle among Portuguese political parties and their leaders. Since real decisional power rests elsewhere, principally in the government but also in the hierarchies of the parties, the Assembly is little more than a hollow shell through which political elites must pass in order to gain the democratic stamp of approval. While there is a broad consensus among deputies about their legislative role, this role is not specific to the organization itself. Deputies see themselves as delegates of the various parties represented in the Assembly, not deputies of the Assembly who are of a certain party. The Assembly has been clearly marginal in the policy process and occupies itself with activities which have little direct impact on national level policy.

This condition is a product of Portugal's political evolution.23 Unlike many mature democracies, such as Great Britain, the United States, and Sweden, where political parties began as elite factions inside already established legislatures, Portugal developed mass parties outside of parliament and simultaneously created a democratic legislature where one did not exist before.24 Lacking the independence and autonomy that come with age, Portugal's Assembly of the Republic was easy prey for the political parties in their quest for spoils and control. Thus, without the benefit of a parliamentary body sufficiently institutionalized to "deradicalize" political conflict (Steel and Tsurutani, 1986), Portugal

313



TABLE 9

Bagatela Introduced into the Assembly, by Parliamentary Group (in percentages)

Third First Legislature Second Legislature Legislature

First Second Third Fourth First Second Third First Parliamentary Group Session Session Session Session Session Session Session Session

Social Democrat Party (PSD) 0.0 0.0 52.1 73.9 73.2 45.5 40.0 64.9 Socialist Party (PS) 14.3 0.0 28.6 71.4 53.8 31.3 0.0 40.5 Christian Democrats (CDS) 0.0 0.0 57.7 66.7 55.8 33.3 50.0 77.0 Communist Party (PCP) 0.0 0.0 52.8 57.3 56.2 9.5 12.5 43.5

Independent Social Democrat Association

(ASDI) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 2.0

Popular Monarchist Party (PPM) 0.0 40.0 11.1 0.0 0.0

Popular Democratic Movement (MDP) 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 9.1

Popular Democratic Union (UDP) 0.0 0.0 33.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 Left Union for Social Democracy (UEDS) 0.0 0.0 100.0 6.3

Independents 0.0 0.0 37.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

Percentage of Total 1.3 0.0 48.3 55.8 46.6 20.4 34.6 43.0

4

-

t- CD

0 C .r

?-




since 1974 has been like Portugal under its First Republic, which was characterized by extreme factionalism, personalism, governmental instability, and political stalemate (Wheeler, 1978).

If Portugal is ever to have a stable, effective representative democracy, the Assembly will have to become autonomous as a corporate body capable of making an independent contribution to the formation of public policy. This does not mean that the Portuguese parliament must become a "maximalist" legislature like the U.S. Congress. It simply means that the Assembly must achieve some organizational autonomy and be able to compel governments to govern in concert with it.

According to Jewell (1973), the key to legislative independence and autonomy is the nexus between parliamentary and constituency parties. Some means will have to be found to "parliamentarize" the political parties and "deradicalize" them, as Italy seems to have done recently (Leonardi, Nanetti, and Pasquino, 1978) and as the established parliamentary democracies accomplished early in their histories. Portugal must make the parliamentary party independent from the party outside of parliament so that the Assembly can develop its own roles, norms, behavioral expectations and traditions. Attention and resources must be allocated to internal processes at the expense of the external demands of the parties. No longer merely a convenient arena for the pursuit of nar- row political ends, the Assembly has to become an organization that is a prime source of gratification and power for deputies, with its own esprit de corps. Professional norms of conduct among deputies have to be encouraged so that the Assembly can acquire the aura of friendliness it now so clearly lacks. Such developments would enhance the power and authority of the Assembly as an organization and give it the capability to contribute in a significant way to national public policy.

Walter C. Opello, Jr. is Associate Professor of Political Science, The University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi 38677.

NOTES

This research was carried out while I was a Fulbright-Hays research fellow at the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa, from October 1984 through May 1985. I wish to thank the Instituto and the Luso-American Educational Commission for their support. The views I have expressed herein are, of course, entirely my own and I am

responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation. 1. On the golpe, see Bruce, 1975; Fields, 1976; Harsgor, 1976; Maxwell, 1976;

Porch, 1977; Schmitter, 1975; and Wiarda, 1975.

315



316 Walter C. Opello, Jr.

2. Consult Opello, 1978, for a discussion of cycles in Portuguese constitution making.

3. See Opello, 1978, for a description of the structure and functioning of Por- tugal's Assembly of the Republic.

4. On February 16, 1986, Mario Soares, the former leader of the socialist party, was elected president, the first civilian to hold the office in more than 60 years.

5. On the stability of the Portuguese party system, see Opello and Claggett, 1984. In the 1985 general elections held after this research was completed, a new party called the Party of Democratic Renovation (PRD) won 17.9% of the vote and 45 seats in the Assembly. It is too soon to judge whether this party will survive long enough to change Portugal's quadripartite party system.

6. The relative parity between president and parliament was the product of the influence of the MFA on the constituent assembly during the period of exception.

7. For a detailed discussion of the politics of the revision process see Bruneau, 1981.

8. The identification by Hoskins, 1971, of an "opportunist" role in the Colombian legislature exemplifies this problem. See also Hopkins, 1970.

9. The "situation" ("situaiffo") is the word given by the Portuguese to the pre- vailing government at a particular time. For a discussion of "situationalism" in Portugal see Robinson, 1979.

10. Interviews with former parliamentary group leaders revealed that the parliamentary groups were more independent of the external party in the early years of the Assembly's existence than they are at present.

11. This individual is the president of the Communist party's parliamentary group.

12. Parliamentary groups seek most of the positions within the Assembly for prestige and greater individual reward rather than for the power and decisional authority they carry.

13. This individual is a member of the Communist parliamentary group. 14. Not all legislation automatically receives this treatment. Frequently, bills are

voted in the generality and speciality in the plenary. 15. Exact figures were not available from the Assembly's records. I was told,

however, by the chief of the section for committee support that "hundreds and hundreds" of substitutions were made on each of the committees per session.

16. Nor does it mean that committees in the Assembly have to become as powerful and specialized as those in the U.S. Congress. Something more than the present chaotic committee system is, however, necessary for institutionalization.

17. Again, this individual is from the Communist parliamentary group. 18. A good example of this took place in 1984 when Carlos Mota Pinto, who was

vice-prime minister and minister of defense, was ousted from the presidency of PSD by his rivals within the party. He immediately retook his seat in the Assembly in order to continue the struggle within the party. In returning to the Assembly, Mota Pinto was exercising his "right" to his seat of which he was, like all other deputies originally elected but serving in government, etc., considered to be the owner (dono).

19. The subvention is calculated on the basis of 1/225 of the minimum wage for each vote obtained by each party represented in the Assembly in the most recent election. As the minimum wage has increased, the subvention for each party has risen accordingly.

20. The complete list is as follows: Press Council, National Council of Illiteracy and Adult Education, National Elections Commission, Social Communications Commis- sion, Coordination Service for the Extinction of ex-PIDE/DGS (Secret Police), and the Ombudsman.



Portugal's Parliament 317

21. In order to accommodate the absence of deputies, for example, the new rules have lowered the quorum for the plenary and committees, the latter now being allowed to meet anywhere in the national territory.

22. One informant even described the Assembly as a porcaria, a pigsty. 23. Portugal's Assembly has the characteristics of a nineteenth-century legisla-

ture. See Thompson and Silbey, 1985. 24. For a fuller discussion see Opello, 1985.

REFERENCES

Bruce, Neil. 1975. Portugal the Last Empire. Toronto: Wiley. Bruneau, Thomas. 1981. Politics in Portugal 1976-1981 and Revisions of the Constitution.

Presented at the SSRC Conference on Contemporary Change in Southern Europe, Madrid.

di Palma, Giuseppe. 1976. Institutional Rules and Legislative Outcomes in the Italian Parliament. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 1:147-180.

di Palma, Giuseppe. 1977. Surviving Without Governing: The Italian Parties in Parlia- ment. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Duverger, Maurice. 1980. A New Political System Model: Semi-Presidential Government. European Journal of Political Research, 8:165-187.

Eisenstadt, S. N. 1966. Modernization: Protest and Change. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Fields, Rona. 1976. The Portuguese Revolution and the Armed Forces Movement. New York: Praeger.

Harsgor, Michael. 1976. Portugal in Revolution. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications. Hopkins, Raymond F. 1970. The Role of the M.P. in Tanzania. American Political Science

Review, 64:754-771. Hoskins, Gary W. 1971. Dimensions of Representation in the Colombian National Legis-

lature. In W. H. Agor, ed., Latin American Legislatures: Their Role and Influ- ence. New York: Praeger.

Hoskins, Gary W. 1975. Dimensions of Conflict in the Colombian National Legislature. In G. R. Boynton and C. L. Kim, eds., Legislative Systems in Developing Coun- tries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Huntington, Samuel P. 1969. Political Order in Changing Societies. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Jewell, Malcolm E. 1970. Attitudinal Determinants of Legislative Behavior: The Utility of Role Analysis. In Allan Kornberg and Lloyd D. Musolf, eds., Legislatures in Developmental Perspective. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

1973. Linkages Between Legislative Parties and External Parties. In Allan Kornberg, ed., Legislatures in Comparative Perspective. New York: McKay.

Jewell, Malcolm E., and Albert F. Eldridge. 1977. Conclusion: The Legislature as a Vehicle of National Integration. In Albert F. Eldridge, ed., Legislatures in Plural Societies: The Search for Cohesion in National Development. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Katz, Daniel, and Robert L. Kahn. 1966. The Social Psychology of Organizations. New York: Wiley.

Kim, Chong Lim. 1973. Consensus on Legislative Roles Among Japanese Prefectural Assemblymen. In Allan Kornberg, ed., Legislatures in Comparative Perspective. New York: McKay.



318 Walter C. Opello, Jr.

Kim, Chong Lim, and Byung-Kyu Woo. 1975. Political Representation in the Korean National Assembly. In G. R. Boynton and C. L. Kim, eds., Legislative Systems in Developing Countries. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Leonardi, Robert, Raffaella Nanetti, and Gianfranco Pasquino. 1978. Institutionalization of Parliament and Parliamentarization of Parties in Italy. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 3:161-185.

Loewenberg, Gerhard. 1971. The Influence of Parliamentary Behavior on Regime Stability. Comparative Politics, 3:177-200.

. 1973. The Institutionalization of Parliament and Public Orientations to the Political System. In Allan Kornberg, ed., Legislatures in Comparative Perspec- tive. New York: McKay.

Loewenberg, Gerhard, and Samuel C. Patterson. 1979. Comparing Legislatures. Boston: Little, Brown.

March, James G., and Johan P. Olsen. 1984. The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life. American Political Science Review, 78:734-749.

Maxwell, Kenneth. 1976. The Thorns of the Portuguese Revolution. Foreign Affairs, 54: 250-270.

Mezey, Michael L. 1972. The Functions of a Minimal Legislature: Role Perceptions Among Thai Legislators. Western Political Quarterly, 25:686-701.

Opello, Walter C. Jr. 1978. The Parliament in Portuguese Constitutional History. Iberian Studies, 7:22-29.

. 1978. The New Parliament in Portugal. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 3:309-334. __ . 1981. Local Government and Political Culture in a Portuguese Rural County.

Comparative Politics, 13:271-289. ? 1985. Portugal's Political Development: A Comparative Approach. Boulder, CO:

Westview. Opello, Walter C. Jr., and William Claggett. 1984. The Dynamics of West European Party

Systems: The Portuguese Case. Polity, 17:165-178. Polsby, Nelson W. 1968. The Institutionalization of the U.S. House of Representatives.

American Political Science Review, 52:144-168. Porch, Douglas. 1977. The Portuguese Armed Forces and the Revolution. London:

Croom Helm. Robinson, Richard. 1979. Contemporary Portugal. London: Allen & Unwin. Schmitter, Phillippe C. 1975. Liberation by golpe: Retrospective Thoughts on the Demise

of Authoritarian Rule in Portugal. Armed Forces and Society, 2:5-33. Searing, Donald D. 1985. The Role of the Good Constituency Member and the Practice of

Representation in Great Britain. Journal of Politics, 47:348-381. Sisson, Richard. 1973. Comparing Legislative Institutionalization: A Theoretical Explora-

tion. In Allan Kornberg, ed., Legislatures in Comparative Perspective. New York: McKay.

Sisson, Richard, and Leo M. Snowiss. 1979. Legislative Viability and Political Develop- ment. In Joel Smith and Lloyd D. Musolf, eds., Legislatures in Development: Dynamics of Change in New and Old States. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Steel, Brent, and Taketsugu Tsurutani. 1986. From Consensus to Dissensus: A Note on Postindustrial Political Parties. Comparative Politics, 18:235-248.

Thompson, Margaret Susan, and Joel H. Silbey. 1985. Historical Research on 19th Century Legislatures. In Gerhard Loewenberg, Samuel Patterson, and Malcolm Jewell, eds., Handbook of Legislative Research. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Wahlke, John C., Heinz Eulau, William Buchanan, and LeRoy C. Ferguson. 1962. The Legislative System: Explorations in Legislative Behavior. New York: Wiley.



Portugal's Parliament 319

Wheeler, Douglas L. 1978. Republican Portugal: A Political History 1910-1926. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Wiarda, Howard J. 1975. The Portuguese Revolution: Towards Explaining the Political Behavior of the Armed Forces Movement. Iberian Studies, 4:54-61.



Documents

Portugal's Parliament: An Organizational Analysis of Legislative Performance